Client context
British Sugar is a subsidiary of Associated British Foods, a FTSE 100 company. It is the UK’s only producer of sugar from beet, buying from 3,500 farms nationwide to satisfy two thirds of the UK’s sugar requirements.
As a traditional business, it had long relied on conventional, transactional processes. The IT department was spending 30–40% of its time fixing data problems caused by process issues, and different parts of the business were drawing on different systems for the same metrics.
The business problem
The business recognised it needed a three-year strategy to deliver more relevant insight, 90% of which could only be implemented through improved data and information handling. The root cause of most problems was in the quality of its data: its lifecycle, ownership and accountability. In some cases, nobody was accountable for a particular data set; in others, it was trapped inside siloed applications.
What we did
Red Olive was brought in to flesh out the roadmap and develop the business case for a new data platform. We spoke with stakeholders across the organisation about their specific requirements, devised an enterprise data model, identified commonalities and proposed a delivery sequence with estimates and a high-level design.
We used the BEAM methodology to prioritise 160 use cases down to six with the greatest cross-over, scoring each on costs and benefits. We helped the business visualise how the new platform would work, broke the project into agile objectives, and helped get the business excited about the opportunity.
How we worked
Red Olive managed to get the business involved and excited about the journey ahead. We mapped future possibilities to a business context that stakeholders could understand, helping them see beyond their transactional legacy systems.
The results
The board granted funding and signed off the larger transformation programme. Red Olive’s work gave senior management a better understanding of what data should and can deliver. The roadmap and business case provided the foundation for the next phase of implementation.
Looking ahead
With funding secured and contractors in place, the in-house team is moving ahead with the second phase of the project to improve data handling and deliver on the promise of the strategy.
Red Olive had to do a lot to gain the trust of the business. It had to get them to understand not only that we were bringing them a cool technology, but one that would give them value quickly now and for the future.Julie Wardhaugh,
