Woolworths in pact with B'lore-based MetricStream for audit & document mgmt

MetricStream solutions to deliver operational efficiency, reduce costs and ensure sustainable compliance with quality and safety standards

Bangalore based MetricStream, the market leader in enterprise-wide Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions, has announced that Woolworths Food Division, a prestigious chain of retail stores in South Africa, has gone live with MetricStream solutions for Audit Management and Document Management. With MetricStream solutions, Woolworths can increase the efficiency of audit management, confidently meet regulatory demands, enhance reporting efficiency, and significantly reduce compliance costs.

A household name throughout South Africa, Woolworths sells a wide range of products including food, clothing, beauty products and homeware across over 400 stores in South Africa, as well as through franchise partners in Africa and the Middle East. Renowned for its commitment to quality, Woolworths was awarded the prestigious Responsible Retailer of the Year title at the World Retail Congress 2008.

“Having gone live with MetricStream solutions, we are extremely happy with the results,” said Zyda Rylands, Managing Director, Foods at Woolworths. “MetricStream met all our business requirements, and continued to support us right through system implementation. With their solution, we can effectively align business strategy with quality and compliance programs. We look forward to our continuing relationship with MetricStream and the implementation of additional GRC solutions.”

“For a food retailing brand, ensuring quality and safety is of utmost importance. Yet it is also a complex function, made all the more difficult with increasing suppliers and products,” said Shankar Bhaskaran, Vice President, International Business Operations at MetricStream. “Woolworths was determined to enhance its reputation as a retailer that people can trust, which is why we were delighted to partner with them. MetricStream solutions will enable Woolworths to confidently meet the demands of quality, mitigate risks and increase the efficiency of compliance programs.”

Woolworths Food Division is committed to selling products that are delicious, healthy, high quality and environment-friendly. Complying with these standards and other regulations across a complex supply and distribution chain spanning 6,000 global suppliers requires meticulous auditing and documentation. The process of manually compiling audits across business processes, products and suppliers was both complex and time-consuming.

With MetricStream solutions, Woolworths can independently manage all quality, safety and compliance related documentation, records and audits from a central framework. The process is completely automated and workflow-driven, providing managers with easy access to data, and enabling them to perform analytics from multiple dimensions such as supplier, product, date and event.

Two MetricStream solutions have been implemented thus far – Audit Management and Document Management. The Audit Management solution enables Woolworths to audit suppliers, stores and warehouses; the Document Management solution supports internal policies, supplier documents and certification processes. Both solutions have been rolled out across the enterprise and its global activities, thus increasing the efficiency of reporting and auditing. Executive dashboards provide real-time visibility into the audit and compliance process, enabling managers to track and remedy issues, and ensure that all regulatory and safety requirements are being met.

“We are pleased with this strong validation of our GRC Platform and Application suite and look forward to a strong partner engagement to help Woolworths with their ongoing GRC initiatives,” said Shellye Archambeau, Chief Executive Officer at MetricStream. “With the ability to visualize and react faster to risks and opportunities in the market place companies are increasingly seeing the need to have a collaborative and robust GRC framework and automation in place. This further strengthens MetricStream’s penetration in the Food & Retail industry and in the Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance solution areas.”

About MetricStream
MetricStream is a market leader in Enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Solutions for global corporations. MetricStream solutions are used by leading corporations such as Pfizer, Philips, NASDAQ, UBS, SanDisk, Subway, Fairchild Semiconductor, SunTrust Banks and Cummins in diverse industries such as Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices, Automotive, Food, High Tech Manufacturing, Energy and Financial Services to manage their quality processes, regulatory and industry-mandated compliance and corporate governance initiatives, as well as by over a million compliance professionals worldwide via the www.ComplianceOnline.com portal. MetricStream is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and can be reached at www.metricstream.com.