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. 

InterBev 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. 

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 them streamline the 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 InterBev 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 solution we built for InterBev has 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.