drinkworld Technology + Marketing 2/2022
drinkworld Technology + Marketing is the leading magazine for the entire drinks industry worldwide. Feature articles and short communications cover the whole spectrum of processing, bottling, raw materials, logistics, packaging and marketing of beverages. We also report on special topics of regional interest and the trends in the beverage industries worldwide. Readers are executives and decision-makers in the brewing, dairy and mineral water industries, manufacturers of non-alcoholic drinks, wine growers and bottlers.
drinkworld Technology + Marketing is the leading magazine for the entire drinks industry worldwide. Feature articles and short communications cover the whole spectrum of processing, bottling, raw materials, logistics, packaging and marketing of beverages. We also report on special topics of regional interest and the trends in the beverage industries worldwide. Readers are executives and decision-makers in the brewing, dairy and mineral water industries, manufacturers of non-alcoholic drinks, wine growers and bottlers.
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<strong>Marketing</strong><br />
World’s Best-Connected Brewer:<br />
HEINEKEN’s Journey to Real-Time<br />
Global Connectivity with Event-Driven<br />
Integration at its Core<br />
Chris Wolski<br />
HEINEKEN is one of the largest brewers on the planet, with a brand that is<br />
known around the globe. But in a fast-changing market and with constantly<br />
evolving consumer demands, you need to be more than just big – you need<br />
to be agile.<br />
HEINEKEN recently rolled out its EverGreen global business strategy<br />
designed to ensure it keeps up with shifting business requirements now<br />
and into the future. Through the invaluable support of its IT organization,<br />
HEINEKEN has its sights set on digitally transforming to becoming the<br />
world’s best-connected brewer. Chris Wolski, Vice President at Solace, looks<br />
at how HEINEKEN is using event-driven integration to realize this goal.<br />
HEINEKEN is one of the largest brewers<br />
on the planet, operating across 190<br />
countries where its Heineken® beers<br />
and ciders are sold. It is a household<br />
brand for many with an excellent<br />
reputation. But this is not enough<br />
in the current market climate – the<br />
company has recognized the need<br />
to ensure resilience and adaptability<br />
in its operations going forward. This<br />
was what led to the formation of its<br />
EverGreen strategy – a five-point<br />
business-wide plan to drive superior<br />
growth, fund that growth, raise the<br />
bar on sustainability & responsibility,<br />
become the best-connected brewer and<br />
unlock the full potential of its people.<br />
To underpin this strategy, HEINEKEN<br />
turned to its Digital & <strong>Technology</strong> (D&T)<br />
organization to help enable corporatewide<br />
resilience and agility. The team<br />
was challenged to integrate thousands<br />
of business-critical applications<br />
across payments, logistics, inventory<br />
management, and more, while also<br />
connecting dozens of separate<br />
operating companies (OpCos), some<br />
of which still relied on local or legacy<br />
business systems. Finally, it needed to<br />
connect across 350 global and local<br />
brands in more than 190 countries – a<br />
formidable task.<br />
Solving bursty data flows means<br />
smoother global operations<br />
According to Guus Groeneweg,<br />
HEINEKEN’s product owner for digital<br />
integration, becoming the world’s bestconnected<br />
brewer means “providing all<br />
internal and external customers with<br />
real-time access to data provided through<br />
integration assets, and ensuring those<br />
integration processes work effectively,<br />
consistently, and without disruption.”<br />
Enabling consistently fast, reliable, and<br />
robust integration processes across<br />
diverse business functions is not an<br />
easy task for a company that frequently<br />
sees data come in large bursts from<br />
geographically dispersed sources. That<br />
“bursty” data flow – driven by orders on<br />
the back of a new beer brand launch, for<br />
example – can overwhelm integration<br />
platforms that rely on point-to-point<br />
communication via synchronous APIs.<br />
This can result in duplicate orders, lost<br />
orders, lost revenue and ultimately,<br />
unhappy customers.<br />
To overcome these challenges and meet<br />
its ambitious digital transformation<br />
targets, HEINEKEN has adopted an eventdriven<br />
approach to integration. In short,<br />
it’s underpinning its legacy integration<br />
and API management technologies<br />
with a dynamic and robust event-driven<br />
architecture layer that will deliver data<br />
from external parties, prevent data loss,<br />
mitigate system failures, and guarantee<br />
business continuity in the case of cloud or<br />
iPaaS outage.<br />
Event-driven infrastructure<br />
bolsters cloud-based D&T<br />
strategy<br />
Two years ago, HEINEKEN faced challenges<br />
relating to the increasing volume of orders<br />
it was receiving. This increase put pressure<br />
on its cloud integration infrastructure,<br />
sometimes resulting in duplicate and lost<br />
orders. They needed a solution, and fast.<br />
Event-driven integration was the answer.<br />
By event enabling its integration platform,<br />
HEINEKEN’s processes have become more<br />
robust and reliable.<br />
“Taking an event-driven approach has<br />
increased efficiency in what data is<br />
moved, and how this is done,” explains<br />
Groeneweg. “In the past, HEINEKEN would<br />
see hundreds or thousands of point-topoint<br />
scenarios, but now they are being<br />
leveraged with the 1-to-many integration<br />
patterns, where an application only has to<br />
produce an event (like an order of beer)<br />
once, and any other applications in the<br />
system (production, shipping, fulfillment,<br />
inventory, payments, cloud data lake etc.)<br />
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