Muntons Annual Review 2016

Muntons Made
TECHNOLOGY
A new dawn for
OUR DIGITAL
LANDSCAPE
BRIGHT
SPARKS
ONLY
Being able to communicate effectively is vital
for any business and this is particularly
true for internal communications within the
business itself. Muntons is growing, with its
footprint stretching internationally, therefore
the sensible step was to invest in the
building and establishment of an intranet to
help with staff communications.
Accurate and timely information is the bread and butter of business,
providing the basis from which important decisions are made. The
current SAP system at Muntons has been providing our business
information for the last 17 years but the time has now come to upgrade
to a new state-of-the-art information solution: SAP S/4Hana.
A firm foundation is crucial when building
a solid, strong structure and the same is
true when building and planning a business.
As with a building, the design, layout and
construction of the footings is vital and the
same is true for Muntons new Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) tool S4/Hana. Having
decided which ERP solution would be the best
fit for us, we entered the blueprinting phase
of the project. Staff from all areas of the
company were co-opted into the project,
to ensure that the new system was designed
correctly to provide the information needed
in every area. This work was undertaken
without qualm, as its importance to the
business was clearly recognised. The team
tackled this with enthusiasm and dedication.
This phase has effectively nailed down the
final design of the system ready for its
construction.
The next phase was to move the project
nearer to realisation as each of the
blueprinted documents were ‘signed-off.’
Testing and tweaking and retesting are
now taking place as the project moves
nearer towards completion – scheduled
for the middle of 2017.
Once complete, and after training, we
will begin to feel the benefits of the new
S4/Hana ERP system. Improvements in real
time planning, reporting and analytics based
on live data will provide opportunities for
significant business benefits.
Image courtesy Sally Wilson
Having selected the platform and constructed the intranet to reflect
our corporate style, the process of populating the intranet started.
Department pages were setup and the media library populated
and tagged and a team were drafted in to fill the intranet with
useful and easy-to-find information. But the name? This needed
some work. A competition was organised designed to engage the
staff themselves into using their creative skills to offer suggestions.
The winner (Dave Mugglestone, Head of Quality, Food Safety and
Environmental Systems) was indeed a bright spark who, after
dropping the suggestion ‘Spark’ into the mix, picked up the prize
of a brand spanking new Kindle-Paperwhite.
Spark is used to share news stories around the company and inform
staff of corporate activities and successes. Information vital to the
staff, such as what’s on the menu today in THE canteen is easily
accessible through Spark, as is access to our corporate vision,
mission and values. More useful however is the ability to download
up-to-date forms, presentations, templates and to be able to search
for images from the extensive media library. The system is relatively
intuitive, so everyone here can now feel the benefit.
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Discover more at: www.muntons.com
Muntons PLC Annual Review 2016