(Analytical Tools: Flowcharting

and Decision Tables)

Mary Joy Bombasi

Grace Theresa Gacutan
Jolly Belle Ann Marcos
Christina Dapon
Cheny Ann Campanado
Erwin Botardo

Introduction to UNILEVER
Background
Unilever is one of the worlds largest suppliers of fast moving consumer goods in
the refreshment, foods, and home and personal care sectors. With a portfolio of over
400 brands, it has consistently ambitious growth targets. The company has an
extensive annual budget for cutting-edge research and development, and thousands of
projects in its innovation pipeline at any one time. This means that in order to make
informed decisions on how to manage this portfolio, it needs absolute clarity around the
risks and opportunities it faces.
However, like any large, dynamic organization, complexity has a large impact on
Unilevers decision-making process. Many parties are involved in the process, often with
conflicting values, motivations, perspectives, personalities and power bases. These
organizational complexities are reinforced with analytical complexities such as the large
number of interrelated inputs that must be factored in to the decision, the high level of
uncertainty inherent in early-stage developments ad potentially conflicting decision
criteria.
Mission
Unilevers mission is to add Vitality to life.

We meet every day needs for

nutrition, hygiene and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good
and get more out of life.
We are increasingly embedding sustainability thinking into the day-to-day
activities of our brand management and R&D teams. We have done this through a
simple tool called Brand Imprint. Brand Imprint forces management to think carefully
about both the resources they use and the social and economic impacts that our brands
have in the countries where they are sold.

Local roots and global scale

Our deep roots in local cultures and markets around the world give us our strong
relationship with customers and are the foundation for our future growth. We will bring
our wealth of knowledge and international expertise to the service of local consumers
a truly multi-local multinational.
Our long term success requires a total commitment to exceptional standards of
performance and productivity, to working together effectively, to a willingness to
embrace new ideas and learn continuously.
Corporate responsibility
To succeed also requires, we believe, the highest standards of corporate
behavior towards everyone we work with, the communities we touch, and the
environment on which we have an impact.
Value creation
This is our road to sustainable, profitable growth, creating long-term value for
our shareholders, our people, and our business partners.
Legal Structure
Unilever operates as a single business entity. NV and PLC are the two parent
companies of the Unilever Group, having separate legal identities and separate stock
exchange listings for their shares. To ensure unity of governance and management,
they have the same Directors and are linked by agreements.

The Equalization

Agreement regulates the mutual rights of the two sets of shareholders, including
dividends. There is a one-for-one equivalence between the shares.

Management
Category Presidents for Foods and Home and Personal Care are responsible for
Category strategies, brand development and innovation.

Regional Presidents are

responsible for managing the business, deploying brands and innovations effectively
and winning with customers. They are supported by the Finance and HR functions.
Strategy
We aim to build a winning portfolio by extending our leadership positions and
our presence in high growth spaces. We are improving our core capabilities Bringing all
this together as One Unilever will ensure that we capitalise on both our local roots and
global scale.

BUSINESS FLOWCHART

A Structured Approach to Decision-Making

For business-critical innovation, Unilever recognized the inherent complexity of
its decisions and the need to maintain a dual internal and external focus to prevent
important opportunities and threats from being overlooked.

It understood that

incorporating these factors into an effective decision making process would improve
decision quality, facilitate faster decision making and ultimately increase Unilevers
agility in the market place.
The Unilever response was to develop a unique approach known as Decision
Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU). This is a disciplined, methodical and structured
approach to decision-making, with probabilistic analysis at the heart of its logical
reasoning. It combines framing and structuring tools with leading-edge analytical
software - Palisades DecisionTools Suite. The DecisionTools Suite is an integrated
package of seven risk, decision, and data analysis tools that run in Microsoft Excel. This
approach ensures that project teams fully understand the scope of the decision, that
they have the tools and the knowledge to make high-quality decisions, and the insight
to understand the consequences of taking one course of action over another.
Overall, DMUU helps to provide the required clarity, insights and commitment to
action.
In recognition that the decisions it needs to make around business-critical
innovation are highly complex, global fast moving consumer goods supplier Unilever
developed its Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) approach. Combining a
structured method with PalisadesDecisionTools Suite software ensures that project
teams fully understand the scope of their decisions, and have the tools and the
knowledge to make informed and high-quality choices. This prevents opportunities and
threats being overlooked, and increases Unilevers agility in the market place.

DecisionTools Suite Guides Decisions on Innovation

Unilever selected Palisades DecisionTools Suite as the principle analysis
software to support its DMUU process and decision-focused culture due to its flexibility
and ability to do Monte Carlo and decision tree analysis using component products
@RISK and PrecisionTree, respectively. Today, the DecisionTools Suite enables Unilever
to develop probabilistic business cases for its biggest innovations, as well as its major
strategic decisions.
DMUU and the use of the DecisionTools Suite is now a standard part of Unilevers
innovation process and probabilistic business cases are required for all big and complex
projects. For example, a typical use for @RISK, the risk analysis element of the suite, is
in evaluating alternative strategies for a new product launch or a major capital
investment.
Unilever teams also use PrecisionTree, the decision analysis tool, to evaluate
early stage projects where decisions and uncertainties will occur at various times in the
future. This approach, using decision trees in PrecisionTree, is used to evaluate the
current value of a project and also to understand the risks and benefits of internal
versus external development routes.
In recognition of the importance of the DMUU, Unilever has an internal
consultancy function to provide decision support and software expertise when required.
In addition, Palisades software is used to support other business areas including
supply chain, safety, regulatory, as well as additional complex one-off decisions. All of
these have the common features of multiple compelling alternatives, significant
contradictions on how to proceed and high stakes should the wrong decision be made.
Strategic decisions require a process that addresses all the elements of decision
quality, explains Andrew Evans, decision analyst at Unilever. However, an integral
part of that process is powerful and flexible software that informs the debate on which
direction should be taken. We evaluated various options and Palisades DecisionTools

Suite was the tool that best met our business requirements. As a result it has played a
key role in increasing the quality of decision-making and helping project teams to think
clearly, act decisively and feel confident.

Additional Information:
Key software / features useful to Unilever:
@RISK is the most commonly used application of the tools available in the
DecisionTools Suite. Decision-makers at Unilever are now used to seeing insights from
business cases described using histograms and advanced sensitivity tornados. Box-andwhisker diagrams (box plots) are also very useful when alternatives or projects need to
be compared. Sensitivity and scenario analysis are used to understand the key drivers
of uncertainty.

In addition, analysts help to draw insights from the models using

summary graphs and scenario analyses.

Distributions used:
Pert and Triang are the distributions used most often when Unilever is deploying
@RISK to evaluate business cases, as they are good for describing distributions when
data is elicited from experts. The discrete distribution is used to simulate alternative
futures, such as competitor action, or different levels of success in a product launch.
However, when good quality historic data is available, or when the tails (eg in safety
studies) are of interest, Unilever uses the wider set of distributions and tools such as
distribution fitting feature available within @RISK.
UNILEVERS ORGANOGRAM (ORGANIZATIONS FLOWCHART)