Distributor adds $5 million in revenue with AI and automation
$5M
Revenue already generated through improved commercial execution
$6M
Annual recurring savings created through a Grant Thornton-managed COE focused on AI, automation and process improvement
10%+
Productivity gains achieved across commercial and back-office functions
At a glance
Client
Regional U.S. beverage distributor
Industry
Manufacturing
Our role
Co-led AI and automation program
Our solution
Scalable automation capabilities
AI and automation scale revenue and productivity
Scenario
A rapidly growing beverage distributor needed scalable AI and automation capabilities to support expansion without adding complexity.
Approach
Grant Thornton | Auxis helped restructure the program around business priorities, stakeholder buy-in and value realization.
Result
The client generated additional revenue, savings and productivity gains while building a durable innovation pipeline.
Scenario
A growth strategy ready for its next stage
A large regional beverage distributor in the United States had doubled its revenue over the past 10 years, creating new opportunities for growth while increasing the need for more scalable operations.
Prospects for continued growth remained strong, and the company wanted to support that growth while elevating employee roles and improving operating leverage.
The business is complex because it requires collaboration with both the parent company and retailers, but the opportunity for the distributor to grow was significant. To capture it, the company needed a strategic restructuring that connected automation ideas to measurable business outcomes.
Approach
Business-led tech implementation
Company leaders selected Grant Thornton and Auxis, a Grant Thornton US company, as their strategic co-lead for an AI and automation center of excellence, with the goal of turning AI and automation into a business-led program that could scale across the organization.
The work started with a detailed examination of the company’s business objectives. Grant Thornton and Auxis identified processes that needed to change to modernize operations and prioritized opportunities that were either truly transformational or capable of delivering high-value improvements.
Leadership buy-in was critical as legacy processes needed to change to take full advantage of the technology available. The company leaders saw the opportunity in front of them and treated the engagement as a co-led partnership from the start.
The nearshore capabilities of Grant Thornton and Auxis in Latin America helped strengthen the partnership by supporting close collaboration throughout the workday. Company leaders even visited the Auxis office in Costa Rica to get familiar with the people who would be working on the engagement.
The center of excellence model that was implemented has an important value realization discipline that identifies the highest-value objectives at the start of the engagement and continues to track the benefits after implementation. The teams continued to monitor the solutions to ensure they achieved the expected value.
Result
Long-term value engine
Many of the results were measurable:
- More than $5 million in revenue has already been generated as a result of this effort.
- The company is experiencing $6 million in annual recurring savings.
- Productivity gains of more than 10% have been achieved across commercial and back-office functions.
In the back office in particular, the program enabled team members to spend more time on higher-value activities, creating additional impact even when the full impact was not as easily measured.
The partnership continues to create value over time while supporting the distributor’s long-term strategy. Because of AI’s transformative capabilities, some business leaders imagine that an implementation will be finished within a few weeks. But the center of excellence concept recognizes that opportunities to use AI to create value are almost endless. And new opportunities emerge as the technology and the business evolve.
As a result, the partnership is helping the distributor scale its operations, sustain measurable gains and continue identifying new opportunities for AI-enabled value.
Connect with our team
Partner, Digital Transformation
Grant Thornton | Auxis Business Modernization & Outsourcing Services
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