UMT’s Client is a major consumer goods manufacturer making some of the best-known snack brands in the world. In order to maximize its focus on emerging markets and growth brands, the client recently split its company into two independent entities. UMT Consulting helped operationalize the Client’s strategy in two implementation phases.

1. Case Study
Global PMO Drives Successful
Split of $32 Billion Consumer
Goods Company
UMT’s Client is a major consumer goods manufacturer making
some of the best-known snack brands in the world. In order to
maximize its focus on emerging markets and growth brands, the
client recently split its company into two independent entities.
UMT Consulting helped operationalize the Client’s strategy in
two implementation phases.
CHALLENGE
The divestiture meant creating a multi-billion company from scratch where all
systems had to be tested numerous times to ensure they are up and running
effectively. In some cases, critical applications were split, in others, they were
cloned and recreated. This impacted every single facet of the Client’s business
and multiple stakeholders including employees, contractors, consumers, and
suppliers.
In order to split the company into two companies, the Client’s Information
Systems division set up a strategic program with the mission to oversee the
smooth, successful and timely split of the Client’s entire IS infrastructure and set
of applications. The program aimed to ensure that post-split, the Client was
seamlessly transformed into two independent firms with flawlessly functioning
infrastructure and applications that support critical business functions with
minimal disruption to the day-to-day business activities.
UMT provided the
Client team with an
insight into how
closely the team’s
work aligns toward
the strategic goals, as
well as a “bird’s-eye”
view into how well
labor and financial
recourses were
managed.
-
After the split was executed, the focus of the Global PMO shifted from the
divestiture program to achieving better alignment among portfolio, strategy, and
cash-flow. As a result of the extensive corporate re-organization that followed
from the organizational split the Client was striving toward fully and seamlessly
integrated planning among finance, strategy and architecture. Therefore, the
Client aimed to mature benefits realization and to establish multi-year portfolio
planning in the first six months after the split.
SOLUTION
At the outset of the program all infrastructure and applications were housed into
a central repository in Microsoft Project Server 2010 and UMT Project Essentials
2010 (now UMT360) where they were categorized or organized according to
criticality, business impact, and complexity.
Based on the level of impact on the Client’s ability to conduct day to day business
with minimal interruptions and down time, program entities were then prioritized
and sequenced for split execution and testing. Working with the Client, UMT built
milestone reports to track application and infrastructure level progress by
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2. About the Client
The client is a major consumer goods
manufacturer making some of the
best-known snack brands in the
world. The client has reinvented its
business multiple times over the
years and operates by introducing
significant strategic and
organizational changes on an ongoing
basis.
 Everything the client does is
focused around investments in
Power Brands and Priority Markets
to drive revenue growth.
 Expand gross margins by pricing to
offset higher input costs,
optimizing product mix and
generating productivity savings.
 Leverage shared services to
provide the fuel for greater
investment in quality, marketing,
and innovation to perpetuate the
strategic cycle.
About UMT Consulting
UMT is a recognized provider of
Project Portfolio & Integrated
Portfolio Management solutions and
management consulting best
practices. For over two decades UMT
has helped Global 2000 companies
gain transparency across their
business and technology asset
portfolios, rationalize costs,
collaborate to make smarter
investment decisions and improve
project success rates to maximize
ROI. UMT is Microsoft's Worldwide
PPM Partner of the Year 2013 and
has been twice named a Gartner Cool
Vendor in PPM and is positioned as a
Visionary in Gartner's Integrated IT
Portfolio Analysis Magic Quadrant.
UMT has offices in New York,
Bellevue, Boston, Chicago, Dallas,
Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, Reston, the United
Kingdom, and Romania.
business function allowing to identify and escalate work that was lagging against
the original schedule. In addition, UMT built financial reports to track capital and
expense actual spending against budget for each infrastructure and application
category and ensure that the program has transparent and visible financial
management and control.
Exhibit 1—Application and Infrastructure Split Progress Dashboard
After the split was executed, UMT team worked to operationalize Client’s strategy
driven by geographical and product profitability and growth by identifying and
tracking the most profitable areas of the company across multiple geographies.
The solution helped aligning, optimizing and prioritizing the capital and labor
resources to the most profitable geographies and products within the company.
The solution also provided an elaborate out-of-box multi-currency functionality
with exchange rate versioning for better accuracy. As most of the Client’s business
was located in developing markets, it was important to minimize inaccuracies in
the Client’s forecasting that was due to currency fluctuations. This helped the
Client to adopt a more advanced portfolio planning, prioritization, selection and
optimization, financial location capabilities and financial snap-short reporting.
RESULTS
Client’s CTO and CIO were able to continuously track and monitor the timely
completion of key milestones, progress on the split of various applications, as well
as ensure split-related application and infrastructure spending was within budget.
UMT has provided the Client with the following benefits:

Prioritize and select projects that align to the Client’s strategic goals most
closely.

Standardize business processes to drive accountability and efficiency across
the global enterprise.

Ensure that labor resources and funding are allocated to those programs that
bring the highest return on investment.

Provide enterprise-wide visibility and transparency into global financial
planning, forecasting, tracking and benefits realization in multiple currencies.
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