Up, up and away

Finally, as Kennedy explains, the solution had to fit the Spin Master business.

“We listed the attributes we need to have a competitive advantage; the things we do really, really well as a leader in our industry. Then we made sure the application was able to deliver on them, rather the other way around.”

After careful evaluation, the company chose ERP supplier SAP.

“Spin Master wanted to show their supply chain partners and their customer base that they were serious about resolving their issues, as they were becoming a tier-one business themselves,” explains Greg Swift, vice-president, central region for SAP Canada.

“As the business grows and evolves, the solution should facilitate that, and that’s a key differentiator for SAP. If you look at a lot of mid-market packages, as business grows and evolves and you get into different areas, the software really starts to degrade and inhibit your ability to do business.”

Laying the foundation
With a vendor selected, the temptation was there to switch on immediately.

But before it did that, Spin Master had to get its own house in order, starting with a wholesale recalibration of the company’s internal processes.

According to Kennedy, this was completed with two goals in mind.

The first was to find ways to free up employees’ time, thus giving them the ability to actively contribute instead of churning through piles of administrative work.
The second was to align the segments operating within the company. Poor communication meant that different groups were not aware of their commonalities, which led to clashes and duplication of work.

To accomplish these goals, Spin Master held meetings with staff at all levels and functions. Together, attendees walked through the process of how orders were handled from start to finish.

“We had a whole group of people that approached it from different angles—demand planners, sales people, logistics planners and warehouse outlet managers,” Kennedy explains. “We realized pretty quickly that everyone had the same goals. We were amazed—there were so many people who had no idea what the other half did. But they really needed to know that to process orders effectively.”

These so-called ‘whiteboard sessions’ were instrumental to the transformation. By setting aside time to map the process collaboratively, employees gained an understanding of how an ERP system would work across all aspects of the business, and were able to brainstorm ideas for how the technology might best be implemented.