WORLD’S SECOND LARGEST BREWER

Optimizing Retail Execution, Sales, and Merchandising With Cloud Inventory®

This international brewer maintains operations in over 70 countries and its distinctive lager flows in 178 countries across the world. As the second-largest brewer globally, this company continues to increase its presence within emerging markets—including across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. In 2016, its Asia Pacific group produced 24.4 million hectoliters of beer, an almost 20% production increase over the previous year. As production in the region grows, so too does the need to standardize and optimize operations.

Challenge

How does a prestige brand like this maximize market share in Asia while maintaining its brand promise? With rapid growth and acquisitions in the region, the company faced unique challenges in the continued pursuit of corporate objectives to optimize end-to-end productivity and to provide excellence in outlet execution.

The brewer’s eight operating companies across Asia each developed regionally specific processes to meet the demand of the varied landscape. Each had its own operating procedures, data capture solutions, and systems of record, including SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. As a result, these disparate systems provided limited visibility to data and inconsistent process execution across the region.

This leading brewer needed a mobile solution to connect these disparate systems and to drive consistent execution. Additionally, due to intermittent connectivity across the continent, the company sought a solution that could enable employees to achieve operational excellence in any environment, on or offline.

Solution

The combination of Cloud Inventory and mobile-first Merchandising Sales App addresses the key challenges impacting the brewer’s operations across APAC. The configurable, modular solution connects data from across the region, is easily personalized to meet the unique needs of each operating company, and offers critical offline capabilities.

Field employees can now capture information through direct input in the field and access vital information that improves decision-making:

  • Assess outlets by brand excellence standards

  • Place orders, immediately updated in the system of record

  • Access customer information and order history

  • View daily forecast reports

  • Manage assets

  • Capture pictures and video on site

While the company uses many systems of record, the Merchandising Sales App provides a single, standardized view of tasks, inventory, and customer information in the field. And because its workforce is so diverse, Cloud Inventory’s multi-language and ‘build once, deploy many’ capabilities made for quick adoption, regardless of the user’s language or platform (iOS, Android, Windows, or PC). The resulting short implementation timeframe enabled the brewer to scale quickly in the region.

Results

One of the world’s largest brewers now has a cohesive view of performance across APAC. The company piloted the solution in 2013 at a major operating company in Vietnam. Since then, the application has been rolled out to nearly 3,000 users in Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Taiwan, and across China.

Additionally, the brewer has extended the Merchandising Sales App beyond its operating companies to third-party distributors. Equipping distributors in Vietnam with the mobile-first app helps them reach more distribution points in one of APAC’s fastest-growing markets. The app grants trusted partners with controlled access to inventory and customer information to improve their productivity and consistency. Moreover, the company’s expanded digital reach enables it to get closer to its customers and deliver quality while supporting rapid growth.

As a result, the company has improved consistency, quality, and productivity. Field reps now have accurate data on hand and can capture information in the field to make better strategic decisions. More importantly, the company has achieved a single, standardized process across a diverse region. This renowned brewer has improved supply chain visibility at the local, regional and global levels.

The global brewer is now in control of its presence in Asia in a way it wasn’t before. With the ability to extend the current solution in a personalized way or to create new apps, the company can continue to defend its title of ‘World’s Most International Brewer.’

 

Industry

Food & Beverage

ERPs: SAP, JD Edwards, Microsoft Dynamics

Highlights

  • Increased sales calls completed per day

  • Standardized processes across diverse region

  • Increased speed from order to delivery

  • More accurate reporting at local, regional and global level