Lipton Teas and Infusions is the largest tea company in the world and has not been part of Unilever since early 2021. Lipton and Pukka tea are two of the 34 brands that fall under Lipton Teas and Infusions. The company was recently acquired by a private equity party and is to become fully independent from Unilever. This AllChiefs customer case describes the contribution of our data experts to this project, within the capability Data Strategy & Maturity.
Reason
The new organization has over 15,000 employees spread across more than 30 countries. All personnel data of these employees are initially located in Unilever’s Enterprise Management System: Workday. In order to make the carve-out possible, a lot has to change in the internal organization in a relatively short time. Think of setting up a new legal structure, a new internal organizational structure, a new Reward model and associated Compensation & Benefits. The AllChiefs colleagues of our People Excellence are closely involved in this and are tackling this together with the internal organization. If you want to read more about this, click here . Our Data experts, on the other hand, work closely with the System Integrator, another large consultancy. It is their responsibility, together with Unilever’s Workday experts, to extract all personnel data of Lipton Teas and Infusions employees from the Workday system, transform it into the correct format and then load it into the new Enterprise Management System of Lipton Teas and Infusions: SuccessFactors. An important aspect here was ensuring that the new system provided the correct management information without disrupting daily business operations.
In addition to this data migration, the new organization also needs a Roadmap in the field of Data Strategy & Maturity. Our Data Chiefs start with an assessment of the current state of affairs in the field of people, processes and technology and make an inventory of the needs of the most important stakeholders. From this starting point, in consultation with the internal organization, the dot on the horizon is determined, the North Star. Subsequently, the strategy to get there is given substance with associated objectives and key milestones.
Challenge
A carve-out offers the perfect opportunity to redesign or improve internal processes. At the same time, there are also structures and internal processes of the parent company that one would like to keep. In this project, the complexity lies in challenging and managing the stakeholders on the aforementioned issues, the many different interests and clearly communicating changes. In addition, it works with highly sensitive personnel data and has hard deadlines. The international nature of the project can also be challenging. Think of cultural differences, national legislation and finding a suitable time for daily meetings with people from all over the world, in different time zones, from India to Canada.
Approach
Our experts work closely with the System Integrator and the internal Workday team from Unilever. Due to the global nature of the assignment, Lipton Teas and Infusions decided to split the Carve-out over 2 moments. The first group of countries, also known as Wave, will go live on April 1 and the second group of countries on July 1.
The data migration process roughly consists of four steps:
– extracting the data,
– transforming the data into the format of the new system,
– loading it into the new system,
– validating the loaded data.
These steps must be gone through individually for Wave 1 and Wave 2. The data will eventually go live in the “Production” environment of the system, but before this is possible, the above steps are tested several times in the “Test” environment. The key stakeholders can then already see what the production environment will look like and any adjustments can still be made so that the “Production” environment is completely in line with the needs at the time of going live.
A similar process is completed with the reports from the new system, which sometimes work differently than management is used to, such as filter options and theme clustering. By repeatedly testing information needs against existing and newly developed reports, everyone will have access to the right information when the system goes live.
To ensure successful cooperation between the key stakeholders, the system integrator and the other project staff around the world, the international team meets several times in Rotterdam during the project. We work from the Lipton Teas and Infusions office or from the AllChiefs office and alternate a tight schedule of meetings during the day with socializing in the evening.