Case Studies

Accolade Wines

Website
www.accoladewines.com
Headquarters
Adelaide, South Australia
Industry
Beverage Manufacturing
ERP
Oracle’s JD Edwards

Using EASYProcess to Streamline JD Edwards Operations and Improve Process Automation Management for Accolade Wine

Accolade Wine implemented EASYProcess, K-Rise’s powerful low-code application development platform allowing them to quickly and easily develop custom integrations, automate business processes, and improve overall efficiency.

Accolade Wines is a leading company in the global wine industry, with its headquarters in South Australia. The company has a diverse portfolio of over 50 top-quality wine brands, ranging from established classics to modern, cutting-edge labels, including famous names like Hardys, Grant Burge, St Hallett, and Banrock Station, as well as exciting up-and-coming brands like House of Arras and Jam Shed.

Managing such a wide range of products and global supply chains is a complex task and one that requires a high degree of accuracy and efficiency. To support these operations, Accolade Wines needed a robust and scalable process automation solution that could handle its growing business.

Rethinking the Strategy

“Most legacy systems supporting Accolade Wines were complex, customized, and difficult to maintain or upgrade. These systems soon became a material risk to the business in terms of both cost and capability,” said Tom McGrath, IT Business Partner Project Delivery at Accolade Wines. “Due to their age, we could not support our business’ current or future needs, and our systems needed to be replaced.”

The architecture burdened with the need to support the core business and transactional system was extensive, including:
  • JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2
  • Master Record On-boarding for Customers and Vendors and Items
  • Demand and Revenue Planning
  • Warehouse Management
  • Order, Fulfillment, Payment Processing
  • Inventory Management, Transportation Management
  • Viticulture and Winemaking

“We had dataflows which were complex, and needed integration chains which spanned multiple technologies and platforms,” said McGrath. “There were duplicates in system types, with a mix of on-premise, hosted, and cloud solutions. This created significant IT management and support challenges,” he said. “We needed a simplified landscape with fewer technology types and versions to manage, where data could flow freely between systems.”

After an extensive evaluation process, Accolade Wines selected EASYProcess as its new platform for process automation and integration. “EASYProcess was the clear winner in our evaluation process,” McGrath said. “It offered the flexibility, scalability, and ease of use that we were looking for, and the Accolade Wines team was able to get it up and running quickly and easily.”

The Promise of a Leapfrog Strategy: Modernizing business to drive efficiency

The Leapfrog approach was a three-year strategic IT roadmap envisioned to fundamentally change how Accolade operates and position the business for long-term success. It was designed to be a significant shift within the organization to:
  • Standardize and simplify processes and technology to drive efficiency and quality
  • Redefine master data and business processes across systems, business units, and geographies
  • Automate and digitize as many business processes as possible
  • Execute projects as lean, purpose-driven initiatives
Year 1:

Derisk and Modernize Viticulture and Winemaking

The Modernization Program of Accolade’s Viticulture was focused on three main objectives:
  • Ensuring business-critical applications were supported on a modern low-code platform that could scale to meet future needs
  • Reducing and mitigating critical failure risk areas within the application portfolio
  • Improving better mobility, automation, and self-service for employees, partners, and customers

K-Rise’s mobile solutions for eCommerce were a perfect fit for Accolade’s needs. “K-Rise’s native smartphone apps offered a variety of features to help improve mobility and usability, including support for third-party voice integration,” said McGrath. “With no IP restrictions, our business can easily customize the app to meet our specific needs and requirements for monitoring and tracking.”

Further business process automation and digitization included better integration with ERP and reporting systems.

Year 2:

Fixing the Core Systems (O2C, P2P, R2R, Manufacturing, and Master Data)

Because data fragmentation and inconsistency slow down time-to-market, create inefficiencies in the supply chain, resulting in weaker market penetration than expected, and drive up compliance costs, it was decided that the next phase of the modernization program would focus on “fixing the core” by:
  • Cleaning up and removing customizations and inefficiencies in in-house software.

    MDM technology was used to profile, consolidate and synchronize the master data across the enterprise and applications to manage, cleanse, and enrich the structured and unstructured master data for integration.

    Supplier data including external sources was cleansed and rationalized using K-Rise BPM Master Data Automation. This resulted in improved self-service, increased control and transparency of spend, and reduced days sales outstanding (DSO).

    Customer data was also cleansed and rationalized resulting in increased customer satisfaction, increased customer lifetime value, and decreased customer churn.

    Item Master for current and future configurations was updated, resulting in increased accuracy of inventory, reduced working capital requirements, and reduced obsolescence.
  • Improving and automating business processes across the order-to-cash (O2C), procure-to-pay (P2P), and record-to-report (R2R) cycles.
  • Standardizing on a single instance of an ERP for manufacturing, supply chain, and financials.
  • Replacing inefficient and inflexible legacy systems with modern, cloud-based applications.
  • Enabling enhanced tools and releases with JDE to combine the benefits of an agile, low-code development platform with the stability of a proven enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Year 3:

Accelerate Digital Market Engagement with Customers and Industry Partners

At its core, Accolade Wines needed to invest in value-added activities that result in increased customer engagement and new customer acquisition. The goal for Year 3 was to migrate customers and distributors to digital self-service channels and to establish a direct-to-consumer (DTC) eCommerce capability.

K-Rise’s Portal, eCommerce, and mobile solutions were used to create a DTC eCommerce site and a B2B eCommerce site for distributors. The DTC eCommerce site offers a personalized experience for customers, with features such as product finders, wine recommendations, and individualized labels. The B2B eCommerce site makes it easy for distributors to place orders, track shipments, and manage their accounts.

The results of this phase of the modernization program have been impressive, with increases in online sales, gross margin, customer engagement, and brand awareness.

What's Next for Accolade Wines?

The next phase of the modernization program will focus on extending the capabilities of the DTC and the B2B capabilities. Plans are also in the works to create a more seamless integration between the physical and digital worlds. In addition, Accolade Wines is looking to expand its reach into new markets and create new brands that will appeal to a wider range of consumers.

K-Rise is proud to be partnering with Accolade Wines on this journey and is excited to see what the future holds for this dynamic company.