An IT team’s lesson in integration efficiency

Werner Leithgöb is no stranger to systems integration projects. Formerly a tech leader at Coca-Cola and now IT director at Lactalis South Africa, he’s handled similar projects before, but never under such a tight deadline. He and his team had just seven months to successfully bring together everything — people, processes, infrastructure, and technology — when Lactalis bought Cremora from Nestlé last year. The key to the project’s success, he explains, was a lean, agile approach built on short sprints and clear accountability.

Describing the integration as a technology-enabled business project, he says the tight deadline made it essential for people to focus on their particular strengths. IT was available to guide and mentor, but was sure to hold different groups accountable for their work.

In the early days of the project, they identified business leaders for different functional areas. “This was important because when problems came up, it was imperative they landed in the appropriate place,” he says. “We were also very strategic about making this accountability visible since there were no secrets around who was responsible for what. IT was like the conductor of an orchestra in that we weren’t playing all the instruments, but we were coordinating which ones needed to be played and when.”

There were times, however, when things didn’t go according to plan. “There’s always going to be that one process, user, or piece of equipment that everybody forgets about,” he adds. “But having various soft landings and working in shorter sprints meant we could resolve these surprises quite easily.” For example, if Lactalis planned a specific layout for the manufacturing facility but didn’t have enough space, or if a piece of equipment was held up at customs that could affect project timelines, they could quickly sidestep the issue by implementing interim processes.

Integration done quickly

According to Leithgöb, the short turnaround time was driven by the need to minimize transition services agreement (TSA) costs. A TSA period is a temporary bridge that lets an acquired business continue to operate while different systems and processes are joined. A TSA is critical to the success of systems integration projects, but these agreements are costly, he admits. “One typically has between 12 and 18 months to move everything over to new systems, but we did everything in about seven months to avoid unnecessary TSA-related costs,” he says.

Given this pressure, Leithgöb and his team looked for early wins, things they could get out of the way well in advance. “The plan was to identify opportunities to quickly tick boxes so we weren’t trying to get everything finished just before we crossed the finish line,” he adds. “We managed to take our infrastructure live two months in advance, which gave us time to stabilize, optimize, and expand as and when we needed it. And about a month before going live, we started issuing all the new end users with the hardware they needed to do their jobs.” These people could then complete the training and get comfortable with everything early on.

“When taking on an integration project like this, it requires a lot of work and planning at the beginning. But when different aspects of the project are early, you reap the benefits, especially if something unexpected happens.”

That said, being confined to such a short timeframe makes change management a challenge. Working closely with business leaders and other key influencers, Leithgöb and his team helped others develop a positive attitude around the changes. Plus, the IT team ran extensive on-site training, leveraging their in-depth understanding of the business and its processes to help new employees get comfortable with the new systems from day one.

The event that wasn’t

So far, the only calls logged with the IT team have been very generic. “Of all the integration projects I’ve done over the years, this has been the most anticlimactic,” he says, going on to call the go-live quite boring because everything went so smoothly. So how can other CIOs replicate this?

For Leithgöb, it comes down to strategic planning and identifying things that can be executed easily and early. “Don’t just shoot out of the starting blocks without a clear idea of where you’re headed,” he says. “But it’s also common for big projects like this to drag on longer than they need to because too much time is spent in the startup phase. We had a clear goal and deadline, and if we wanted to succeed, we knew we needed to be decisive across every aspect of what we were trying to do.”