Kneading your way to the top

They’re bakers born and bred. Now in its fifth generation of family leaders, Warburtons is not just ubiquitous but has become Britain’s favorite baker through an ambitious growth plan. Behind the counter is Deloitte United Kingdom.

Food retailing in Britain has become increasingly dominated by large supermarkets in recent years. Only the top national brands win shelf space, and Warburtons has moved right alongside the top names. In just a few years, the company has grown from being known as a regional bakery serving northern England to becoming fully national and Britain’s largest bakery brand, opening five new state-of-the-art bread plants in the past five years.

“The challenge for every expanding business in a fast-changing market is to ensure that growth doesn’t come at the expense of quality and value,” says Warburtons CEO Robert Higginson. “Deloitte United Kingdom helped us identify and focus on the value drivers in our company so we could strengthen them as our company evolved.”

The magic ingredient for Warburtons’ successful growth is the Deloitte Value Map. Tailored specifically for Warburtons, the Value Map identifies all of the company’s business activities and illustrates how they should be aligned to grow revenue, improve margins, increase efficiency, and meet other expectations. For a fast-growing company such as Warburtons, the Value Map is an ideal tool for determining how changes to operations, processes, and systems will affect the business.

“SAP systems are complex and have a variety of modules,” explains Lead Client Service Partner Sean Beech, Deloitte United Kingdom. “The Value Map helped us develop an information technology (IT) strategy that enabled Warburtons to schedule the implementation of modules in order to more quickly realize their benefits.”

“Deloitte United Kingdom has helped us achieve our growth targets while retaining the core strengths of quality, a tradition of caring and customer service, and values of a family business that have sustained Warburtons for over 130 years,” Higginson says.

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