This project was headed up by our clients Global Commercial Capability team located in the UK but overlooking their 1,200 plus operations in multiple sites across Asia and Africa. The goal was to create a global standardised tool that could be used by the local markets to complete assessments upon their operations. The results of which could then be consolidated and reported regional and indeed globally.

As the tool was to be rolled out primarily across Asia and African locations the tool needed to be able to be available offline, easy to use, intuitive, multi lingual and not be to technologically complicated or resource heavy. For this task MS Excel was identified as the ideal tool for this project.

The project consisted of two main elements, a MS Excel Distributor Assessment file to be completed by each distributor and a MS Excel Consolidator Reporting file, used to bulk import and report upon the returned completed assessments. The project was further complicated by the need for the need to customise the assessment templates text regionally and also to include the ability to translate both tools text into different languages.

The assessment itself consisted of 45 Standards divided out across 6 Platforms, with standards either categorised as General, Commercial, Finance, HR or Supply Chain. In completing a standard, the distributor would be presented with a leading statement, from which they would need to select from a choice of four statements the statement that best represented their operation. A facility was also included to allow for the addition of evidence to support the chosen statement. Upon completion of a full assessment, the assessment would become locked down and the distributor would be given a score (Gold, Silver, Bronze). With the assessment completed, now open to them in the tool would be a printable Scorecard reporting how they performed in each Platform and Standard. Also an Action Plan, generated detailing what actions they need to take for each Standard in order to move up to the next level.

This completed assessment would now also be shared up to regional and global teams for consolidated reporting. Using a separate MS Excel based Consolidator tool, the completed assessments could be bulk imported and merged in the Consolidator tool, with regional/global pivot chart reporting outputted.

The end result was a highly portable and adaptable application that will become a key tool in assessing and managing the many global distributors for years to come.