"The simple control and administration of projects with the project management module makes the implementation of our measures considerably easier. Measuring the success of our efficiency increase program is also much easier thanks to the automatically generated reports. This helps us to achieve our ambitious goals on a group-wide basis."

Gerold Kaltenbach (Senior Vice President Corporate Finance | Nordzucker AG)

Global collaboration for maximum project success

As one of the leading sugar producers in Europe, Nordzucker AG supplies the population with the vital foodstuff sugar. Other products such as animal feed supplement its business. Nordzucker AG's principle is sustainability. It offers the sugar processing food industry, retailers and end consumers a comprehensive range of sugar products and related services. Nordzucker is pursuing a consistent expansion course in the European sugar market.

The company: the focus on sugar

Demands

Cross-site control and transparent management of projects to implement approximately 400 measures to increase efficiency throughout the company.

Purpose

Securing competitiveness and expanding the market position by continuously improving operational processes in production and administration.

The goal

Sustainable increase in profitability. As part of its current "Profitability plus" efficiency program, Nordzucker AG has identified 400 measures in various divisions to continuously improve operating processes in production and administration. The measures relate, for example, to the optimization of logistics and the group-wide bundling of purchasing.

The "Profitability plus" package of measures, which Nordzucker approved and launched for the entire group in February 2010, marks the goal of saving EUR 67 million annually from the 2014/2015 financial year onwards.

Despite a medium to long-term perspective, this is done in realistic, manageable steps, with concrete, measurable measures and clearly defined responsibilities. Above all, Nordzucker wants to reduce its energy consumption. To counter rising energy costs, Nordzucker will optimise distribution logistics and bundle procurement processes in purchasing.

The following applies to all measures: Every single division of the company is involved in the program, and every single employee is required to make his or her contribution.

The implementation

Fast and cost-effective with SharePoint, realistic - but still ambitious: Currently, about 400 measures are planned in the four areas of production, purchasing, personnel and marketing & sales, which Nordzucker is implementing systematically and consistently. Quam offers the suitable platform to simplify project work in teams or across company boundaries. On this basis, a project management system was implemented in only six months to plan, control and document all these measures. The individual measures can be provided with standardized milestones and tracked accordingly.

Web-based and therefore cross-location, Quam replaced the decentralized management of individual projects using Excel sheets. After the migration of the Excel data, targeted evaluations of the extensive data matrices and the automatic generation of reports now enable a daily updated overview of all measures.

The benefit: Targeted project management with little effort

The main advantages of implementation are the facilitation of project management and the optimization of processes. Quam not only facilitates project work in a team but also increases the personal productivity of each individual employee. Ultimately, the financial impact of individual measures and the contribution to the overall efficiency program can be shown.