Experience

International Leadership
Top Level Consulting

Nestle

The Business

Nestlé is the world’s largest food company with
revenues exceeding 80 billion Swiss Francs and employing over 300,000 people.

The Challenge

In 2000 Nestlé embarked on the largest change in its history, designed to achieve three objectives:

  • leverage the size of Nestlé as a strength not a liability
  • unite and align Nestlé on the inside to be more globally competitive on the outside
  • enable Nestlé to manage complexity with operational efficiency

The Solution

The achievement of these objectives required harmonised best practice processes, implementation of data standards and management and the implementation of standardised information systems and technology. The resulting ‘Globe’ programme was a business-driven change enabled by technology which included process, information and cultural elements, allowing Nestlé to make a very fundamental step in its evolution. Not only was this programme extremely extensive in functional scope but the size and geographic spread of Nestle resulted in the programme being the world’s largest ever implementation of SAP software.

The Outcome

By June 2007 Nestlé had implemented the Globe programme in over 80% of its business. During the period 1998 to 2007 the company’s share price rose from 200 to over 500 Swiss Francs, providing a shareholder return of about 400% over the period including dividends and share buy backs. In a HP-sponsored CNN video entitled ‘The Changemasters’, Nestlé said it believed this programme had delivered 5 years of competitive advantage.

The role of David Dockray

The programme was constructed as a three-way partnership between Nestlé, PwC Consulting and SAP. David Dockray personally initiated the original discussions from scratch with Nestlé and provided top level leadership for PwCC/IBM for the five years from 2000 to 2004 when the Globe programme was successfully delivering. PwCC was the largest external services provider engaged with the programme and the agreement was the largest commercial sector agreement worldwide for PwCC, involving consultants from over 30 countries.