Hindustan Unilever

As an FMCG, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) has been driving all levers of margins, operating efficiency, cost savings, mix and right price. Knowing well that commodity cycles change paths, it has continued to strive to stay lean, agile and efficient at all times, because the company is in a business that is here to stay in the long term and must be able to sustain itself considering the adequate investment behind the brands and capabilities. With that in mind, it continues to look for further opportunities to drive efficiencies and effectiveness of its spends, be it in the area of materials, supply chain, overheads or marketing. It has pulled it under Project Symphony. This work underpinned by a spirit of continuous improvement enables it to deliver on a goal of consistent improvement in margins.

In his speech at the June AGM, Harish Manwani, chairman, HUL had said that if R&D drives the global innovation pipeline, supply chain keeps the operational wheels moving. With globalisation, supply chains become increasingly complex. As a multi-country organisation, the right balance between global, regional and local can build enormous competitive advantage. In Unilever, the ‘Source, Make, Deliver’ supply chain model ensures that many of the raw materials are sourced globally to take advantage of scale, manufacturing is local or regional as relevant and the last mile delivery to customers has a sharp local focus. This provides the optimal balance of low costs and uncompromising customer service.

Global leverage often starts with local successes; this applies equally to best practices in executional excellence as well as in product development. On the basis of the learnings in India, HUL has created a global distributor management system called LEVEREDGE that has now been rolled out across markets in South East Asia and Africa. This is allowing HUL to raise the bar on customer service consistently across multiple developing markets.