![]() Its name, created by combining the words Bambi and bingo, has entered the Mexican culture and language but still raises eyebrows north of the border - where the company will now be the No. It actually cut waste by 50% and achieved record-setting growth rates, all while changing behaviors-and lives-in the process.Six decades later, the company will become the world's leading bread maker when it closes on the acquisition of the Sara Lee Corp SLE.N business for $925 million next year. “It makes me emotional because these frontline individuals have more time with their families, and they make more money to support their families,” says Troy Rudd, market sales leader, BBU.īBU had hoped to cut waste by 20% without compromising growth. And this changed not only the business, but employees’ well-being. Early versions of the solution yielded a Net Promoter Score℠ of 50, compared with an average of –8 for IT enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.Ī year-long journey took us from early sketches to a solution that could be scaled-one that not only made forecasts more accurate but, crucially, made ordering more streamlined and efficient. Predictive analytics and a purpose-built user interface removed the guesswork the time needed to make and adjust orders was cut by 50%, releasing organizational energy to focus on growth. Once launched, the tool’s impact was immediate and broad. This meant not only identifying the architecture and partnering with the right experts, but also implementing a plan for change management and training. The ResultsĬritical to ION’s success was defining the path to scale early in the process-and garnering frontline advocacy for the scale solution. And as users entered more information, the algorithm got smarter. Employees could view their route overview and stores, and quickly identify key metrics, including categories with high accuracy, or those with low volume. The final tool, dubbed “ION,” was built on a simple, but potent ethos: “Make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing.” The tool was designed to enable the front line to make smart, informed orders in the moments that matter. With BBU’s commitment to experimentation spurring continuous improvement, we made hundreds of changes to get it right. ![]() We then tested the proven solution in three more sites. At the same time, we designed a new ordering-tool prototype with a user-friendly experience and the power to reinforce effective ordering. In just 2½ months, we built a forecast that was 35% more accurate. We assembled a cross-functional team, bringing together members of BBU’s front line with the consulting team, data scientists from the Bain Advanced Analytics Group, and design strategists from Innovation & Design. When we couldn’t find any off-the-shelf software to solve these problems, we harnessed the power of Bain Micro-battles System® to build our own. To reduce waste, we needed to dramatically improve forecast accuracy and give the front line a tool that would build trust and enable them to make targeted interventions. As a result, the data was largely ignored in favor of ordering with a bias toward making sure they never ran out of a product. They lacked the data to make strong decisions, and the information they did have was spread out over several pages and ultimately deemed untrustworthy. Given these two challenges, frontline workers mainly followed their gut when ordering products. The second was a food-ordering system that made it hard to make “good” adjustments to those forecasts. While there were several issues, two main problems surfaced: The first was an order forecast that was highly inaccurate for any given SKU, in any store, on any day. So the joint BBU and Bain team went directly to the source, talking to frontline employees to find out why there was so much waste. “They had the answers that we just didn’t have.” How We Helped ![]() “We decided to engage our frontline associates into major transformation,” says Morgan Smith, vice president, BBU. This call to action catalyzed a company transformation-one that couldn’t be executed within a boardroom. BBU’s executive team issued a bold challenge: Create a “perfect order” system that would reduce waste, while still driving growth. ![]()
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