Reflecting on the near completion of this transformational journey, I believe that the determination and perseverance of executive leadership and the project team, which consisted of 250 people across all geographies at its peak, were central to its successful delivery.

In fact, this transformation presented a unique opportunity to recruit and retain a high-quality IS/IT SAP team which has been a significant benefit to Tate & Lyle. Building this team and carrying out business process design in-house gave us control over our own destiny. Our program of workshops, first with IT colleagues, then involving other teams within the business, and, finally, with implementation partners, helped us understand the depth and breadth of in business processes needed to provide robust capabilities to numerous functions, geographies, and, most importantly, to our customers. Getting this design right upfront has meant that we have had little need over the years to add functionalities to our core business processes.

What has continued along this journey has been the ongoing harmonizing of data, such as recipes, customer segmentation, and product hierarchy, which can vary from region to region. Harmonizing data provides transparency and insight into how best serve our global customers.

At Tate & Lyle, our customers are at the heart of everything we do and now we have a single face to each customer. Whether we are shipping an ingredient in China, Slovakia, or the US there is that same “look and feel” to the customer. The customer gets a consistent quality and presentation of information and documentation, with language, regulatory requirements, and customer specifics being the only variables. We have many different capabilities and we are able to match our service offering to the customer’s need - whether it is providing special labelling or managing inventory in a certain way. In contrast, our internal functions such as procurement, finance, and shipping operate on the guiding principle of global common processes and resist the desire to customize where it is not absolutely required thus enabling efficient and portable processes.

One of the biggest lessons from the project was around organizational change management. Helping users to adapt to new business processes was even more complex than anticipated. Working with colleagues in Communications and Human Resources to assess the change impact, build awareness of these changes, and set an expectation with line managers on adoption has been key. Additionally, we have established a robust global support network consisting of super-users in each geography and business process area underpinned by a broad array of training, adoption, and data quality tools.

This project has been a significant undertaking for Tate & Lyle. Its successful implementation enables us to move processes and people easily from region to region, with systems operating the same irrespective of one’s location. This new capability and our new way of working have been transformational for the company and really enhanced our ability to anticipate and meet the needs of our global customer-base.