1. Company Background:
Nestlé SA is a giant food and pharmaceuticals company that operates virtually all over the world. Headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, the company had 2004 revenues of $76 billion and more than 253,000 employees at 500 facilities in 80 countries. Best known for its chocolate, coffee (it invented instant coffee), and milk products, Nestlé sells thousands of other items, most of which are adapted to fit local markets and cultures.

2. Nestlé's Enterprise Resource Planning
Why ERP?
As we mentioned earlier, Nestle is a multinational organization with branches and subsidiaries all over the world. BUT They had no clue how much volume they were doing with their vendors, because every factory set up and had their own vendors and purchased on their own .
So they had a DECNTRALIZATION PROBLEM with the factories.
They needed ERP systems to help in centralization.
History with ERP:
In June 2000, Nestlé SA signed a $200 million contract with SAP.
And threw in an additional $80 million for consulting , installation and maintenance. The Switzerland-based consumer goods giant intends to use the SAP system to help centralize their 200 operating companies and subsidiaries in 80 countries.

3. Implementation
Formation of project team to implement five SAP modules:
Purchasing
Financials
Sales and distribution
Accounts payable and accounts receivable
Supply Chain Management
Each Module deployed under each Nestle division
- In order to have a successful implementation:
right individuals need to be involved in the process from the beginning + Remember the integration points

4. Struggles and difficulties with the SAP ERP system modules:
-The firm has allowed each local organization to conduct business as it saw fit, and use its own rules. Taking into account the local conditions and cultures of each country. -To support this DECENTRALIZED STRATEGY, it has had 80 different information technology units that run nearly 900 IBM midrange computers, 15 mainframes, and 200 UNIX systems. Interestingly, despite its size, the company has had no corporate computer center.
-قبل تطبيق الشركة للـERP كان عندها مشكلة الـdecentralization في مصانعها ، بعد تطبيق النظام تقريباً ب3 أو 4 سنوات بدأت تظهر نفس المشاكل عند الشركة لانها لم تغير سياستها

5. Struggles and difficulties with the SAP ERP system modules Cont.
Employees’ acceptance of the system:
The workers could not understand the system and the new processes -lack of proper training and expertise-.
Technical difficulties between the modules:
The modules were uniform across divisions but were not integrated between themselves.
-الـModules كانت موحدة لجميع الاقسام ولكن نفس الـ Modulesماكانت integrated مع بعضها البعض.

6. Apprise Software Co.
After struggling with the problems mentioned earlier, instead of changing its policy, the company moved to another ERP systems vendor.
In the recent years Nestle became one of the largest customers of Apprise Software…
“Apprise supplies us with both the software and expertise that allow us to better serve our customer and vendor needs”
About us:
Apprise Software knows consumer goods. As the leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) solutions for the consumer goods industry since We have grown into a multi-national company with headquarters in the US and offices in Asia, Australia and throughout Europe.

7. Food distribution Software
Our ERP software, Apprise®, is built to come out-of-the-box with functionality to turn your biggest challenges into simple solutions.
it’s useful in many ways:
Manage full forward and backward lot traceability.
Share real time product, pricing, inventory, and information with authorized users.
Manage sales, returns, recalls and expiration dates by product from the factory through to your customer..
Allocate and prioritize limited inventory by customer or sales representative.
Optimize route scheduling and fleet delivery to help manage fuel costs and driver efficiency.
And much more.

8. Results Nestle USA realized a savings of over $325 million
Most of the savings came from Supply chain improvements, specifically demand forecasting
The new system has reduced inventory levels
Nestle came together as one organization with use of common processes ( Training)