In-depth Process Knowledge Adidas?s Epiphany on Digital Transformation

Why this skill is necessary

Process complexity is a significant driver of increasing process costs which is difficult to teach, slow to execute, and expensive to maintain. Furthermore, governing compliance for these processes is difficult to establish and monitor, especially as regional variations push up against global standardization. Hence, before starting on the journey for any standardization or digitization, GPOs need to have an in-depth process understanding.

What adidas achieved using this skill

adidas?s Challenge: Disconnected Systems

• Disparate systems for processes across credit, collections, deductions, billing, and payments.
• Multiple, disconnected systems led to:
  • Productivity loss in low-value manual coordination across teams
  • Broken customer experience in interfacing with different systems
  • Concerns about maintaining a single source of truth with SAP

adidas?s Epiphany on Digital Transformation

• With in-depth understanding of their process, Tracie Duncan, Director for Credit was able to define their requirements from technology clearly
• Defined the vision as ?Digital Enablement with Integrated Receivables?
• These vision aimed any two core objectives:

• In order to move away from a ?siloed? approach, the team laid out the following charter for successful technology deployment:
  • One vendor across credit-to-cash for a simplified IT landscape
  • Handle subsidiary operations through a single system
  • Enforce tight ERP integration to maintain a strong, single source-of- truth
  • †Leverage automation to eliminate low-value manual tasks across credit-to-cash processes