About the client
A regional food and beverage distributor running eleven depots across three temperature zones, supplying independent retail, hospitality and contract catering. Ownership is centralised; buying never was.
The problem
Each depot bought locally, which made sense when there were three of them. At eleven, the group had eleven versions of the truth. The same supplier quoted different prices to different depots. Stock sat in one depot while another raised a purchase order for it. Nobody could answer "what have we committed to this month" without a day of collation, and by the time the answer arrived it was out of date.
“The group was negotiating against itself and paying for the privilege.”
What changed
Swyftflo gave the group one order book without taking buying away from the depots. Requests still start locally. They now route against group policy, draw on a single supplier master, and check availability across every depot before anything is ordered.
Control Tower shows committed spend as it is committed, not after the invoice lands. When a depot raises a shortfall, the system looks group-wide first and proposes a transfer before it proposes a purchase order.
How it works now
Stock, open orders and supplier commitments sit in one live view, filtered by depot, zone or category. Exceptions surface first: a line running ahead of budget, a delivery that has slipped, a supplier quoting outside contract. Everything else stays quiet.
Buyers kept their autonomy. What they lost was the spreadsheet.
What to take from it
Centralising a supply base does not require centralising the buying. One shared record and one policy were enough to stop eleven depots competing with each other.
