From ancient times, milk and milk products have been an integral part of the Indian household. The mythological stories abound with children consuming milk, butter and other such stuff. Fittingly today, India is the largest producer of milk in the world accounting for nearly 20% of the world production.
This journey from a position of scarcity to the present abundance has been possible due to multiple players who have ensured the interests of farmers, retailers and consumers are always kept centre stage. Ananda Dairy, one of India’s top dairy producers has a pride of place in this list.
Starting with just one plant in 1989, Ananda, under founder Radhe Shyam Dixit now has 4 major plants and over 400 retail stores across India. Ananda’s vision is to grow at a minimum of 30% a year and open another 1000 retail stores across India by 2020. This breakneck speed of growth is not possible without technology powering the entire system from procurement to billing. That’s where SAP came in.
“Nobody can grow without technology”, says founder Radhe Shyam Dixit and it is that belief which SAP nurtures by managing the entire end-to-end process, from the farmer level to inventory management to sales and distribution.
Milk is sourced from farmers and stored in tanks for diary production
The process starts at the procurement level. Ananda gets milk from 5000 different sources, all of which must be tested to ensure quality and deliver a fair price to farmers. SAP S/4HANA collects data from all the milk collection centres and uses it to value products and ensure timely payments to farmers. With 75 products and over 400 SKUs, manually keeping track of inventory was a huge challenge. Ananda uses SAP technology to streamline this process which eases planning on a daily basis and lets management focus on business decisions. SAP even helps Ananda calculate daily demand from different retail outlets by consolidating demand in SAP S/4HANA and dispatching vehicles directly to the given shop.
“We have adopted SAP technology for the growth factor. Each and everything is connected to SAP”, these words by Mr Dixit embodies the Ananda story of ambition and growth. And SAP is proud to be part of this journey.
Watch how Ananda streamlines inventory management with SAP S/4HANA on #LifeAt: Ananda Diary:
https://youtu.be/OxUz-HpVz88