Home/Case Studies/Intelligent Decisioning provides technical direction and development expertise for SABMiller

Application Lifecycle Consultancy for SABMiller

Intelligent Decisioning provides technical direction and development expertise for SABMiller.

The Business Problem

SABMiller is a FTSE 20 company, one of the world’s biggest brewers operating across six continents and the world’s biggest bottler of Coca Cola products. Intelligent Decisioning partners with SABMiller to provide technical direction and development expertise for their Global Intranet and bespoke SharePoint applications.

In 2011 SABMiller made the decision to migrate their Global Intranet with 30,000 users to a SharePoint 2010 Platform. Intelligent Decisioning worked with Microsoft Consulting Services to produce a blueprint and roadmap for the migration. Missing from their SharePoint 2007 platform was an adequate level of governance, a software development lifecycle and global information architecture. Intelligent Decisioning was engaged to provide these for their new platform.

“I have worked with id, in particular Tony Pounder and Andy Smith, at SABMiller since January 2011. In that time, I have found them to be trustworthy, knowledgeable and they have produced work to a high standard. They delivered a number of projects on time and within a budget. I would highly recommend id to any potential future customers.”

Andrew Bradley, Senior Project Manager at SABMiller

Our Approach

Intelligent Decisioning is currently providing consultancy to appraise the existing SharePoint 2010 Farm in terms of the suitability of a move to Office 365. This involves working with SABMiller’s Global Strategy and Architecture team to prepare the organisation for their migration from SharePoint 2010.

The following activities have taken place:

A new Governance framework was defined.
A new Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) was defined for internal and third party vendors.
A Global Information Architecture was defined so that content and document classification were more consistent, leading to a more accurate Search experience.

Key Features

Intelligent Decisioning provided a Document Management System for SABMiller’s Technical Function’s ISO9001 controlled documentation.

We also enhanced the company’s application to cater for a Global Marketing Initiative and integration into an online Media Library for large files.

A number of Intranets based on SharePoint’s Publishing framework were developed, with multi-lingual sites in Czech, Polish and Latin American Spanish. The sites, based around communicating local and global information, included homepages, structured organisational content and news, as well as social aspects for the site’s users.

Currently we are integrating Nintex forms workflow into the organisation, developing best practice, governance and solutions.

The Value Add

For SABMiller’s global Intranet, we designed and implemented an infrastructure solution that enabled SABMiller associate organisations to access the SABMiller SharePoint 2010 extranet. We planned and organised SABMiller’s people, resources and infrastructure. A rigorous third party penetration testing process was undertaken to ensure that SABMiller’s IP was protected.

For the Distribution Directory, id implemented a three tier capability Hierarchical Data Model with the process controlled by a mix of Site and Data Workflows. SABMiller employees were invited to be members of the Directory.

For the Document Management System, our solution utilised the document library functionality of SharePoint 2007 combined with custom development. Document libraries for controlled documents and part-controlled documents were provisioned according to SABMiller’s business needs.

Utilising the workflow capabilities of SharePoint 2007 also allowed id to create a comprehensive review, approval and publishing task system.