CUSTOMIZE FOR THE
CUSTOMER AND
STANDARDIZE FOR SAVINGS
f
The efficiency of the retail cycle
starts with buying products.
Across its different banners,
Delhaize Group has a team of
experienced buyers ensuring
the right products for the right
assortment at the right price.
This is the result of both their
knowledge of products within
their own category enhanced
with the knowledge and experi
ence of buyers in other countries
and in other categories across
the Group.
In order to capitalize even bet
ter on this collective experience
from across the Group, and to
benefit from the synergies of
scale, Delhaize Group started
already a few years ago cen
tralizing its buying activities in
the U.S. Combining the procure
ment teams from across the
different operating companies
within Delhaize America into
one organization ensures that
Delhaize America fully benefits
from the available knowhow
and best-practices with respect
to sourcing, assortment, pro
motional planning and private
brand management. Migrating
these back-office systems and
processes from the individual
operational companies gives
those more resources to do what
they do best: listen and respond
to the needs of their customers
and serve them the way they
deserve to be served. Finally,
the Delhaize America structure
also centralized and standard
ized other non-customer-facing
functions like accounting, finan
cial analysis, legal and business
development. On top of that, the
Delhaize America structure
comes with the systems to sup
port it like a common finance
platform and centralized human
resources and payroll systems.
The success of this standard
ized structure at Delhaize
America proved to be a good
example for the creation of the
Delhaize Europe structure in
2012. Important efforts were
made to harmonize and stand
ardize local activities on a Euro
pean level such as finance, IT,
legal and human resources.
From a systems perspective
this new structure will be sup
ported by SAP. Efforts are also
being made in Europe to cre
ate better procurement efficien
cies in order to leverage know
how and economies of scale.
Already, since early 2009 all
European operations have been
benefiting from the membership
to the buying alliance, AMS, giv
ing them access to the best pos
sible quality products at the best
possible prices.
DELHAIZE GROUP ANNUAL REPORT '12 19
