Developed an Automated Template for Overseas Purchase Budget Preparation

• Client is one of the largest retail and distribution giants in GCC having outlets across multiple geographies.
• The client maintains an extensive product portfolio sourced from various countries, requiring frequent international travel for procurement purposes.

Problem Statement

• The client relied on a labour-intensive method to create budgets for around 80+ separate international purchasing trips each year, examining nearly 200 distinct categories within each budget.
• The client required a Budget Planning Model designed for precise budget estimation at the category level, aiming to enhance accuracy and mitigate challenges commonly faced during the budgeting process, ultimately reducing manual labour efforts.

Objective

• Create a model that employs data-driven scientific methodologies to tackle challenges encountered by the client when estimating budgets for each trip, such as demand forecasting, determining country diversity shares, special budget etc. at a detailed category level.
• The model should be largely automated to reduce labour-intensive tasks, while allowing flexibility to adjust values within a specified range for budget estimation equation variables. This enables users to apply their expertise based on experience, in conjunction with insights from the data-driven system.
• The model template should streamline budget preparation and summarization across different category levels, and it should also simplify the approval process.