Souligny says that the company still needs to work on its customer scorecard — a ranking Milnot/Beech-Nut's top 25 customers by sales. "The scorecard is the ultimate test" for the order-to-cash cycle, he notes, because executives can easily drill down to the root causes of difficulties with order completion, on-time shipments, sales increases, or profit contributions.
Milnot/Beech-Nut's investments in the order-to-cash cycle have an eye on that not-so-distant future when "manufacturers will be fully responsible for managing their inventory" at the retail level, according to Souligny. Someday soon, he believes, his customer reps will automatically know when a grocery store is low on, say, jars of banana supreme, and ship out just the right amount the next hour.
Improving Milnot/Beech-Nut's order-to-cash cycle is just the beginning, adds the finance chief. Souligny says he's glad to be at a smaller outfit where IT projects can be fast-tracked and management doesn't get caught up in big-company politics. It seems "small is big" for Souligny, too.
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