You are Ifeoma Balogun, Head of Operations at SaharaFresh Distribution, a consumer-goods distributor based in Lagos, Nigeria. Your two largest principals, 41% of revenue, have warned that late and short deliveries will send them to another distributor, and your team cannot agree where the problem lives. You have thirty days to bring a plan and one quarter to deliver it.
The situation
Tuesday, 14 July 2026. NorthStar Foods and AquaClean sign a joint letter. Together they account for ₦39.4 billion of revenue, and their service measure, on-time-in-full delivery, has fallen to 78% against the 95% in their contracts. Both contracts allow them to appoint a second, parallel distributor if that measure stays below 90% for two consecutive quarters. One is already gone.
SaharaFresh carries 1,400 product lines for eight manufacturers into 22,000 outlets, from kiosks to supermarkets, across Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and Port Harcourt. It books ₦96 billion at a 4.5% operating margin, about ₦4.32 billion, and runs four distribution centres, 140 owned and hired vehicles and ₦11.5 billion of inventory. It grew by buying three regional distributors between 2018 and 2023, and never integrated them: the centres' catchment areas overlap, each keeps its own inventory rules, and transport per case costs 35% more than the best benchmark in the country, between diesel, detours on bad roads and security escorts.
Service is not the only thing failing. Only 88% of order lines ship complete, against a 97% target. Inventory turns 8.3 times a year, against 12. Logistics costs 11.8% of revenue against an 8.5% benchmark: about ₦3.2 billion too much a year, more than the whole operating profit. Trucks leave 61% full, against 85% in good practice, and emergency transfers between centres have tripled to ₦480 million a quarter.
Your team is split. Some say the problem is the map, four inherited centres treading on each other, and the network must be decided now. Others say transport is the biggest cost and can be attacked this very week. Others want nothing decided until the cost to serve is measured lane by lane and product class by product class. And a fourth voice blames safety stock set by feel for years.