Elmer's Products, Inc.

Elmer's Products Inc, markets hundreds of products developed to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers.

They range from a full line of adhesives, arts, crafts, and educational products for children to complete offerings of craft, hobby, office, and home repair products for adults. The Elmer's family has grown to include an impressive collection of brands that provide project solutions and fulfill consumers' inherent needs to create, build, and learn.

Key Challenges

Poor visibility into vendor spend, hindering contract negotiations, unreliable, inconsistent, outdated information resulting in conflicting data and inaccurate reports Lack of category-management reporting.
High support costs and efforts.
Inadequate integration, analytics, and reporting to support company-wide profitability initiative.

Why SAP was Selected

Complete integration with the SAP ERP application
SAP software landscape already in place
Successful SAP environment, eliminating need for competitive analysis

Implementation Best Practices

Incremental approach eliminated need for blueprint
Workers given access to information during deployment
Knowledge transferred to power users
Leadership team owned process, with representation from each functional area Business processes improved on ongoing basis

Low Total Cost of Ownership

Speedy, 5-month deployment
Integration with SAP ERP infrastructure
Mostly internal implementation and maintenance
Standard content delivered with software, helping to decrease time to benefit Redeployment of support resources to value-add activities
A system performance improvement of some 35%

Financial and Strategic Benefits

24-month payback Annual US $250,000 savings, which Elmer's reinvests into value-add activities
Faster ability to identify and correct problems
Enhanced vendor negotiations and strategy
Improved internal communications
Faster responses to market changes
Successful project, proving strategic importance of technology

Operational Benefits

Key Performance Indicator
Increase in usable information +25%
Reduction of planned downtime -40%
Increase in sales performance visibility +50%