MetricStream Customer Woolworths Wins OCEG's 2013 GRC Achievement Award

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading South African retailer and MetricStream customer, Woolworths, has won the prestigious Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG) GRC Achievement Award, presented on May 21, 2013 at the Compliance Week Conference in Washington, D.C. This award recognizes the great strides that organizations have made in improving and integrating their approaches to GRC in order to achieve "Principled Performance."

Commenting on their win, Zyda Rylands, Managing Director for Food at Woolworths said, "We are honored to be recognized by OCEG for our quality management efforts. For the last six years at Woolworths, we have sharpened our focus on quality audits, creating accountability at all organizational and supplier levels, and integrating and automating our food safety and quality processes – all of which has been supported by the MetricStream GRC solution. Today, even with a substantial growth in the number of our stores, and an increase in sales, we have been able to reduce the number of customer complaints significantly, while strengthening our brand image and credibility."

Headquartered in Cape Town, Woolworths is one of South Africa's top retailers with revenues of over USD 3.4 billion and a wide assortment of products sold under its private labels. The company manages over 400 stores, including 51 international stores, selling food, homeware, clothing, financial services and beauty products. At the heart of Woolworths food business is the 'good business journey' which, in addition to ensuring their food is safe and of high quality, focuses on sustainability. Every part of Woolworths' food production process – from supply to distribution to waste – is constantly monitored to minimize the impact on the surrounding environment and society.

"In light of increasing food safety issues and product recalls across the globe, it is great to see Woolworths take such comprehensive steps toward strengthening their food quality and safety measures," said Carole Stern Switzer, OCEG President. "The company's initiatives are well-planned and executed – from establishing total quality management as a corporate initiative, to facilitating continuous improvement, to ensuring that all quality, safety, and compliance processes are visible, repeatable, measurable, and consistent."

The 2013 OCEG GRC Achievement Awards recognized Woolworths for its sustainable food quality and safety management program, which is focused on implementing a single, overarching quality and safety management framework across the supply chain. The company has worked towards realigning its quality culture, actively enforcing quality guidelines and standards, and standardizing food quality and safety processes. Measures were also implemented to improve supplier risk management, due diligence, compliance monitoring, traceability, and incident and non-conformance management.

To support this entire process, Woolworths implemented MetricStream's centralized supplier quality and audit management solution, built on the scalable MetricStream GRC Platform. The solution has enabled the company to automate, integrate, and streamline food safety and quality processes, and simplify and accelerate quality audit management.

Said Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream, "Woolworths has demonstrated the right approach for large food and retail companies – with thousands of employees, hundreds of products, and stores and suppliers around the world – for establishing a truly holistic, collaborative, transparent, and cost-efficient food safety and quality program. We are delighted that MetricStream was able to play a key role in this effort with our GRC platform and solution. Our heartiest congratulations to Woolworths for this distinguished recognition."

About Woolworths

Woolworths Holdings Limited is a South African-based retail group listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). In South Africa, the group trades through Woolworths (Proprietary) Limited, a respected chain of retail stores offering discerning customers a selected range of quality clothing, food, homeware, beauty and financial services under its own brand name. Woolworths Holdings also owns Country Road Limited, a leading clothing and homeware retailer listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.

For more information go to: http://www.woolworthsholdings.co.za

About MetricStream

MetricStream is a market leader in Enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management Solutions for global corporations. MetricStream solutions are used by leading corporations such as UBS, P&G, Constellation Energy, Pfizer, Philips, BAE Systems, Twitter, SanDisk, Cummins and Sonic Automotive in diverse industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Energy and Utilities, Food, Retail, CPG, Government, Hi-tech and Manufacturing to manage their risk management programs, quality processes, regulatory and industry-mandated compliance and corporate governance initiatives, as well as several 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.

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SOURCE MetricStream