Strategic priorities

A recent project that went live in June 2010, is enabling SABMiller to capitalise on its scale by creating consistent information and processes and a single, integrated IT system across finance, procurement and human resources. By standardising essential processes around the globe, the project is allowing the business to save costs, enable faster sharing of better quality information, accelerate the integration of new acquisitions, free up local management to focus on their own commercial priorities and create a more connected global organisation.

Standardised processes, especially in finance and administration, also make it possible to establish outsourced shared service centres, presenting further opportunities to optimise efficiency and reduce costs.

SAB in South Africa has for some time run back-office financial activities for its beer and soft drinks businesses through an in-house shared service centre enabled by a local Enterprise Resource Planning system. The SAB model was chosen as the basis for the global template with development expertise coming from around the group. SAB recently outsourced its shared service centre to a business process provider and is seeing the benefits of more efficient processes at lower cost.

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