Carrefour Soluções Financeiras
“I would like to acknowledge the excellence of their support team during the tool’s implementation and the beginning of its operation in terms of the training they provided about the software’s functionality which enabled us quickly absorb this new knowledge. We are very satisfied with this partnership.”
Lívia Pereira Bastos
Control and Management
Carrefour Soluções Financeiras, Brazil
COMPANY
With 32 years of experience in Brazil, Grupo Carrefour has been a pioneer in this country’s retail market with its hypermarkets. Today its network consists of 190 units located in 14 different states. Operating under the brands Carrefour, Carrefour Bairro and Atacadão, this group is the market leader in the supermarket sector with 55 thousand employees, and is thus one of the largest employers in the country. This Group is the second largest retailer in the world, operating in 29 countries.
In terms of services, the Group includes Pharmacies, Fuel Stations, and Travel Agencies, reflecting the brand strategy of Carrefour in Brazil. The Carrefour Card was launched almost 20 years ago and began as a way to offer clients credit and financing options for their daily purchases. In May 2007, Grupo Carrefour consolidated its financial institution and began to offer new products and services to the company’s more than 7 million customers under the brand Carrefour Soluções Financeiras. Present throughout Brazil, Carrefour Soluções Financeiras was created with the goal of being the best option in terms of offering and distributing financial products and services to Grupo Carrefour’s target market.
CHALLENGE
The project emerged from the need of upper management to find a new way of analyzing and monitoring bank costs, adopting in principle a methodology different from the classic registering of costs per account and cost center.
In addition, there was a need to integrate and disseminate knowledge of the bank’s processes as a whole rather than within the narrow responsibility of each cost center.
SOLUTION
In the middle of 2008, the MyABCM tool was selected as part of the solution developed to support cost management for Carrefour Soluções Financeiras – CSF by Processes. After conducting an evaluation of software available in the market, MyABCM was chosen because it met the company’s technical and financial expectations. The software was implemented through a partnership with the consulting firm Ankyla Serviços de Consultoria, and quality support helped ensure that everything ran smoothly within the expected timeframe.
A consulting firm was hired to develop the system’s modeling and they opted for the ABC costing methodology and the purchase of a tool, given that their ERP didn’t have this functionality. The beginning of this implementation led to two pilot projects for the two main processes at Carrefour.
RESULTS
Currently the two macro-processes have been completely mapped (Maintaining Clients and Acquiring Clients) and they’re being monitored as a form of internally disseminating knowledge about this new form of analyzing results and making decisions. In addition to the intangible gains that have already been achieved, such as having a vision of the processes as a whole and not just separate “fiefdoms,” relevant accounting adjustments have already been identified which have led to a parallel project to review processes in the financial and accounting management areas.
There were many gains in the first year from mapping and detailing the costs involved in the main processes, and they came mainly in the form of more informed decision-making and a change in culture in which each area has become responsible for its part of the process.
