Manufacturing & Supply Chain

Diageo, the maker of Guinness, Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker, has announced a five-year business transformation program in partnership with SAP and IBM. This new initiative, which marks the company’s most significant ever investment in technology and services, will redesign and improve Diageo’s processes across the 180 countries where it operates.

Fully global in nature, the programme will revolutionise Diageo’s IT environment by introducing intuitive processes, powered by market-leading technology, to provide more information to enable the company to make better and quicker decisions. This transformation will enhance Diageo’s business resilience in a constantly evolving external landscape, improve its customer service offering and help the company adapt to a fast-changing consumer base.

The programme involves a move to RISE with SAP S/4 HANA Cloud, with the support of IBM Consulting. Diageo’s implementation of the new cloud-based model will ensure its IT infrastructure is simplified and supported in a unified way.

IBM Consulting, which has been selected to lead the project, has a proven track record in the consumer sector and supporting client transformations and migrations to the SAP S/4 HANA Cloud platform. Diageo, SAP and IBM will work together to apply the latest technology to make Diageo’s business more efficient.

The five-year programme will transform Diageo’s business finance operations in a number of areas:

• Advanced workflow solutions will allow orders to be tracked in real-time on a global scale and facilitate more effective customer engagement and better customer service.
• By moving to a single operating platform, Diageo will simplify its technology support model and IT landscape, making it easier for the company to do business and evolve amid changing consumer trends and market needs.
• The program will transform Diageo’s performance reporting capabilities, giving the company better insight into trade and growth opportunities.
• The digitisation of controls and compliance will make the business more robust, resilient and adaptable to changing market conditions.

Lavanya Chandrashekar, Chief Financial Officer, Diageo, said: “This partnership with IBM and SAP demonstrates our continued investment in digital transformation. It will enable greater agility in how we respond to our global consumer and customer needs. It will provide us with world-class actionable insights and enhanced data capabilities to support growth whilst allowing us to be more efficient in our day-to-day operations.”

Scott Russell, Executive Board Member, Customer Success, SAP, said: “In today’s disruptive consumer goods industry, success lies in navigating unpredictable supply chains, managing ongoing macro-economic volatility and staying one step ahead of ever-shifting customer demands. Through our continued partnership with Diageo, one of the world’s leading brand builders, we’re proud to support them in building a more resilient business that is enhancing the customer experience and can adapt to rapidly changing market pressures, realising its vision to revolutionise the consumer goods industry.”

Rahul Kalia, Managing Partner, IBM Consulting, UK & Ireland, said: “The consumer goods industry is striving to address the challenges posed by inflationary pressures and supply chain disruptions, while staying focused on delivering exceptional products and services for its customers and consumers. IBM is proud to partner with Diageo and SAP to bring our global business and digital transformation experience on this exciting journey.”