Organic Valley Gains Efficiency and Flexibility with John Galt Solutions

COMPANY: Organic Valley
WEBSITE: www.organicvalley.coop
INDUSTRY: Food & Nutrition
COMPANY TYPE: Privately Held
JOHN GALT SOLUTION:
Atlas Planning Platform

Results

  • 234% ROI on the implementation of the Atlas Planning Platform
  • Reduction of inventory and reduced waste
  • Improved the efficiency of demand planning process

Company

Organic Valley is America’s largest cooperative of organic farmers and one of the nation’s leading organic brands. Organized in 1988, it represents 1,800 farmers across the United States and Canada. Focused on its founding mission of saving family farms through organic farming, Organic Valley produces a variety of organic foods, including organic milk, soy, cheese, butter, spreads, creams, eggs, and produce, which are sold in supermarkets, natural foods stores and food cooperatives nationwide. With its regional model, milk is produced, bottled and distributed right in the region where it is farmed to ensure fewer miles from farm to table and to support local economies.

Challenge

Organic Valley (OV) had a robust, but highly time-intensive demand planning process that lacked efficiency in the existing software tool. Instead of employing a dedicated demand management system, OV used their existing trade promotions management (TPM) system with some modifications. This workaround required extensive manual effort from OV’s planners, including significant offline processing in Excel. OV saw they had an opportunity to remove this manual effort and allow its planners the ability to focus on more strategic opportunities with a more robust and automated demand planning process.

Solution

John Galt Solutions’ Atlas Planning Platform was selected over several ERP and TPM vendors’ competing offerings. Atlas offered major improvements in statistical depth, process flexibility, and ease of use. With the graphical and table views in Atlas, OV is able to more efficiently evaluate demand plans and respond accordingly with in system modifications. In addition, OV was able to implement their entire demand planning process through Atlas – from demand planning through S&OP output without any need for offline work, delivering the time savings that their process badly needed.

Benefit

Since implementing the Atlas Planning Platform, OV has seen a dramatic improvement in the efficiency and stability of their process. OV’s full demand management process has been implemented from end to end in Atlas, eliminating the need for offline work. Overall, OV calculates a 234% ROI on the implementation of Atlas Planning Platform. The returns include reduced and more efficient labor needs, lower inventory and reduced waste, and increased sales through better product availability. OV plans to expand their use of Atlas Planning in the future taking advantage of John Galt’s advanced exception management and product segmentation capabilities. “In a short time, John Galt has improved the efficiency of our demand planning process,” says Beth Wells, Demand Manager at Organic Valley.

“Their software is built for demand management, incorporating ease of use and robust functionality. John Galt has been a supportive and engaged partner. We look forward to a long and productive future working with John Galt.”
Beth Wells, Demand Manager