Manufacturing
Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Business Needs

Brazil Kirin is a subsidiary of Japan-based Kirin Holdings Company, one of the largest beverage groups in the world with more than 46,000 employees working for 270 companies in 15 countries. With a history starting in the late 1800s, Kirin was originally named the Japan Brewery Company. Today the group manufactures and distributes an enormous number of soft and alcoholic drinks – including the famous Kirin and Ichiban Shibori beers – as well as running food and restaurant businesses and engineering and logistics divisions.

As the second largest brewer in Brazil, Brazil Kirin operates 13 factories and employs 11,000 people. It distributes products from 25 of its own centres and also works with 200 resellers to supply products to around 600,000 retailers, all under the exciting new marketing campaign, “Live your thirst”.

Such extensive operations need sophisticated business systems and processes behind it, run from the existing Shared Services Centre (SSC). As the area of the business responsible for Finance, Human Resources (HR), Contracts and Billing, its customers are the Kirin employees in Brazil. After conducting an audit to identify how to best develop the SSC, Kirin partnered with a consulting firm to help it to map all its requirements and the processes that the SSC runs. Guilherme Lacerda Bruns, Managing Director of the Brazil Kirin SSC commented: “We examined our operations throughout the country, in order to understand the perceptions of the internal customers who were served by the Shared Service Center.”

The company realised that there were a number of challenges and unmet needs to be addressed. Productivity of the SSC could be improved; it received a high volume of calls without full registration of the enquiry and ran an initial enquiry process which didn’t enable a high quality of information to be recorded. Some internal customers did not have the most positive perception of the SSC, something which was at odds with its vision. Guilherme said: “A Shared Service Centre must provide a high quality of service to a variety of internal customers, who all have different priorities and require different levels of support. That was when we asked ourselves how a CRM solution could help us.”

The evaluation process was soon underway to identify a transformational solution which could help Brazil Kirin manage and fulfil internal client needs. The SSC management and the IT department identified and selected global Microsoft partner, AlfaPeople, to deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM, due to its in-depth experience of implementing similar projects for other international companies and the ease of integration that would be provided.

Solution

Project implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM lasted six months, including an extensive testing phase. “The tool determines the time needed to address the support enquiry, allows advanced management of information to be available and increases productivity levels of the SSC” says Eber Gustavo, Project Consultant at AlfaPeople, who was part of the implementation team.

The easy-to-manage Microsoft Dynamics CRM is now fully integrated and utilised by the entire SSC, registering all employee requests for attention which are scheduled and approved in a portal. This portal centralises all the business-specific processes to ensure the highest standards of service are provided in response and to ensure business continuity. Guilherme commented: “Microsoft Dynamics CRM caught my attention because the solution is friendly, easy-to-use and more well-known amongst our internal customers. Creating a portal as a key part of the project was a crucial factor in us choosing Microsoft and working with AlfaPeople. The implementation time was also much lower than solutions provided by other companies.”

Benefits

Improved internal customer satisfaction

The main challenge was to provide quality assistance from centralised services to its employees and to check satisfaction of internal customers. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it has become possible to better manage the multitude of processes in the Finance, Human Resources (HR), Contracts and Billing areas and create a step change in the quality of service provided to internal customers.

Efficient outcomes

With delivery of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Brazil Kirin’s SSC can fully support the 4,000 employees with their enquiries. Indicators show that after implementing the tool, the functions increased total productivity by 30% and the rate of new employees needed was reduced by 10%.

Cost management

Process studies and service and productivity improvements meant that the SSC could reduce the need to recruit new employees and so the operations budget was able to be cut back.