Case Study
International Beverage Group
The Story
The International Beverage Group (InterBev) is a global drinks manufacturer, marketer and distributor headquartered in Thailand. InterBev ensures the authenticity of its brands by rooting each one’s global development in its home territory. The UK division produces a number of household-name brands, including Caorunn gin and Old Pulteney Single Malt whisky – named ‘World Whisky of the Year’ in 2012. An innovative and ambitious business, InterBev is actively investing in its growth around the world.
“CompanyNet created a flexible new system built on SharePoint, based on the streamlined process, that would make things more straightforward and satisfying for InterBev staff.”
International Beverage Group
The Challenge
Developing a product is a complex process which involves as many as eight teams across the business – accounts, production planning, procurement, maturation and blending, quality, marketing, sales and customer services.
Each time the process is run it requires the involvement of nine or ten different roles, from a pool of around 35 staff who are available to perform those roles.
The International Beverage Group had two systems for New Product Development (NPD) and Existing Product Development (EPD). NPD was used for major changes, such as brand new products, and product line extensions – new products within an existing brand. EPD dealt with smaller changes, such as new label designs and promotional stickers.
Despite having similar goals, the two systems were not connected, and didn’t even use the same system – NPD used Lotus Notes workflows, while EPD used Microsoft InfoPath forms. The systems were very prescriptive and inflexible; it did not allow if a mistake was made, or for the team needed to easily go back a step to make simple updates, instead they would often have to cancel the process and start a new request from scratch.
This became so frustrating for NPD staff that it led to a lot of the development investigation and planning process taking place entirely ‘offline’ before the details were entered into the system.
The NPD and EPD systems were only used once and there was a high chance of the process going through successfully.
This meant that, if a new product failed to reach the stage of being added to the system, weeks of research and valuable intelligence were not captured centrally and could be lost.
The International Beverage Group sought CompanyNet’s help in designing a system that would enable better visibility of what was happening during the NPD/EPD process, and provide opportunities to identify ways the process could be made more efficient.
The Solution
Knowing that getting the process right was as important as building a better system, we took the opportunity to work with the NPD teams to improve this.
We facilitated sessions with the business to help the International Beverage Group streamline their processes, identifying what steps could be simplified or removed, and combining the NPD and EPD processes. Once the new process was agreed and documented, we started building the solution.
We created a flexible new system built on SharePoint, based on the streamlined process, that would make things more straightforward and satisfying for the International Beverage Group’s staff. The new system now allows users to move backwards in the process any number of steps, or to move ahead – with the appropriate permissions. For example, if the Finance team rejected a proposed product as unprofitable, the process can be moved back to the packaging stage in order to rethink the specification and to reduce the cost.
The system performs a Critical Path report, which reveals the minimum length of time the process should take, together with an estimated completion date. This is done by combining the length of each task in the process; where multiple tasks can be done in parallel, the system only considers the one that takes the longest.
The resultant Critical Path Analysis chart shows the time each task is expected to take, and it can be used to quickly identify steps in the process that are routinely taking too long, or which could be made shorter.
We also provided utilised integration with the International Beverage Group’s existing SAP system, which provides supply chain information such as pricing and bills of materials for existing products; this data is combined with informed estimates entered by staff to generate a profitability reports.
Where data generated by the system had previously been very difficult to interpret, as it was in an XML format, we introduced intuitive SharePoint lists that are much easier to query.
And, rather than just taking place ‘offline’, ideas and discussion are now captured in a SharePoint collaboration site area. This ensures that previous work is not lost if a new product idea is deemed unfeasible or doesn’t go ahead.
“It’s easier for all departments and team members to track what’s going on, giving the business complete oversight of new product development.”
International Beverage Group
The Outcome
The solution we built for the International Beverage Group had a positive impact across the whole business.
Decisions taken around new products are now better-informed, well-documented and backed up by evidence. The new system provides much better visibility of new products in progress, as well as helping staff identify steps that are proving a challenge, and spot which parts can be made more efficient.
It’s easier for all departments and team members to track what’s going on, giving the business complete oversight of new product development. Elements of the system that improve efficiency mean that the time to market for each product can be reduced significantly. Furthermore because the whole process is easier to visualise and understand, the way products are developed has become far more transparent.
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