New Product Innovation Platform

With approximately 80% of its 9,200 employees situated outside of France and operations across 31 countries, our customers stand as one of the largest international agricultural and agrifood groups. One of its subsidiaries, boasting an annual turnover exceeding 1 billion Euros, specialises in three core activities: milling, ingredient production, and bakery & pastry manufacturing. What sets them apart is their profound expertise spanning from field to finished product, coupled with their agility in designing sustainable products that add value for their artisanal, restaurant, industrial, and retail clientele. The company recognised the need for a comprehensive solution for manufacturing new products based on requests from prospects and customers. A New Product Innovation platform that streamlines viability assessments, availability checks, and financial reviews.

Context – Lotus Notes v/s Nintex

Previously, our customer relied on Lotus Notes, an obsolete tool, that was not compatible with the latest tech and security standards. This led to interoperability issues and compromised data security.

Additionally, the specialised skills required for the use and maintenance of Lotus Notes were lacking within the team. With no vendor support, it was difficult for the team to resolve technical issues.

Faced with operational, compliance, and technological challenges, investing in a new solution was necessary. The ultimate objective was to ensure productivity, competitiveness, and security while aligning with the team’s objectives.

Why choose Nintex Automation and AMO as partner?

After a thorough evaluation, Nintex Automation has emerged as the preferred solution to address our client’s needs. The bigger group’s existing use of Nintex on-Prem with AMO as partner since 2021 reinforced this decision.

With Nintex’s powerful process automation capabilities, low flexibility, and seamless integration with existing systems, the platform stood out as the obvious choice. To truly unlock the platform’s potential, our customer approached us, seeking AMO’s expertise to accompany them on their journey.

Our customer chose our Always-On delivery approach, supported by a dedicated team of three full-time experts. With this setup, we set out to transform our customer’s operations.

Challenges faced by the Product Development team

The Product Development team faced significant hurdles due to the complex workflows. Effective collaboration was crucial to the process. The commercial team was responsible for initiating requests, the product team for assessing availability, finance for scrutinising viability, and the research & development and production team executing the development and manufacturing. However, decentralised processes and fragmented communication channels often hampered these efforts. Consequently, the lack of a cohesive system resulted in frequent delays and inefficiencies. This hindered the team’s ability to promptly address customer demands and adapt to market trends, undermining the company’s competitive position.

Moreover, managing costs presented additional challenges. The absence of a streamlined process led to redundant production, where resources were wasted on unnecessary replication of efforts. There were lapses in the financial evaluation of projects, leading to inadequate assessments of their viability. This, in turn, resulted in poor financial decision-making, further straining the company’s resources and affecting its overall profitability.

Therefore, these issues emphasised the urgent need for a more integrated and efficient approach to product development, ensuring that the team could operate more effectively and maintain the company’s competitive edge.

Always-On delivery method to build the New Product Innovation application

Given two options from AMO, our customer opted for the Always-On delivery approach over the project-based method. This choice reflects their preference for a robust continuous delivery mechanism for efficient quick deployment. The agile process involves frequent product releases over 12 months, eliminating the need to plan an entire project at the outset. This flexibility allows our customer to adjust their plans as needed, building a roadmap that aligns with business team requirements.

Leveraging the expertise of our dedicated team of three consultants, we maintained close collaboration with their teams, conducting workshops to gather and implement their business requirements. Our flexibility and ability to quickly adapt to their changing business landscape, combined with the speed and frequency of our releases, allowed for swift implementation of changes and new features. Our agile approach and robust app architecture enabled rapid modifications and deployments, helping our customer achieve their business goals faster and realise their investment more quickly

The first version of the platform marked a significant milestone in increasing efficiency and fostering collaboration among the different departments involved in product development. This was achieved through the introduction of intricate multi-departmental validation matrices, facilitating seamless coordination and communication.

Furthermore, we also consolidated data scattered across disparate legacy databases within the business. This included not only handling individual data updates but also managing bulk updates. To tackle this, we implemented intuitive interfaces and convenient import/export features capable of handling even the most complex datasets seamlessly.

Features & functionalities

Automation of key processes: Over 10 processes, including product creation, modification, deactivation, and reactivation, are fully automated.

Admin console screens: Dedicated admin consoles for each of the three company divisions, allowing teams to autonomously manage data and workflows.

Progress bar for requests: Real-time updates on the status and stage of each task via a progress bar for every submitted request.

Customised dashboards: Dashboards tailored to show users only the relevant tasks and information based on their role and division.

Real-time notifications: Instant updates throughout the product lifecycle to keep all stakeholders informed.

Comprehensive task traceability: Ensuring quality management with complete traceability of all tasks.

KPI tracking and reporting: Monitoring task durations and other key performance indicators to identify bottlenecks and enhance efficiency.

SalesForce integration: Seamless initiation of requests from Salesforce, triggering the entire process effortlessly. Salesforce receives real-time updates, ensuring accurate and current information across the board.

Streamlined data input processes: Simplified and efficient data entry to minimise errors and save time.

Benefits to the company

Streamlined product development life cycle: A more efficient and effective management system for the entire product development process.

Enhanced cross-group adoption: Overcoming hurdles associated with digital solution adoption across different groups, thanks to a powerful, user-friendly application.

Empowered process improvements: Our customer can now expedite and standardise process improvements, rolling them out across their divisions worldwide.

The continuous delivery model used to build this platform facilitates ongoing enhancements, with new features tailored to meet the evolving needs of our customer. The app is underpinned by a robust and agile architecture and framework that allows for smooth modification of the app without disrupting their daily operations. This approach, therefore, ensures stability and continuity throughout the process.