Supporting Edrington’s systems with a long-term partnership

The challenge

Business Need

Edrington’s success stems from exceptional people, dedicated to crafting spirits of the highest quality. With a focus on becoming the world’s leading builder of ultra-premium spirit brands, Edrington leverages multiple business-critical systems. To ensure the solutions’ optimum performance, they wanted an agile and reliable technology partner, ready to provide long-term support. The support model had to be flexible and guarantee quick access to engineers without a complex and time-consuming procurement process.  

Edrington developed an effective partnership model that enables them to adapt at pace with the help of external partners. The company providing the support services had to be an excellent cultural fit and align with the cooperation model. With a successful delivery history to Edrington, Objectivity was entrusted to provide the required support.

The solution

Support Details

Objectivity supports multiple Edrington business-critical systems, built mainly on the Microsoft technology stack, including .NET and Power Platform solutions. Objectivity became a valued partner for ongoing successful delivery with a solid understanding of Edrington’s operations and technology stack expertise. Some of the supported solutions include:

Cask Tracking application

• Casks are at the heart of whisky quality, and an area where Edrington invests heavily. As such, a comprehensive lifecycle tracking system was essential to ensure quality and optimise value.

Barcoding system

• This system consists of two applications, an app for the barcode guns that collect the data and a desktop application that gives the users easy access to the gathered information. The system is connected with the Cask Tracking application and enables effective stock management.

Duty-Free Sample System

• The system controls and manages duty suspended samples throughout the whisky production process from the still to the bottling line. The accurate and precise tracking of these samples is crucial to business operations and the reporting to the UK Government Revenue & Customs.

New Fillings application

• The application supports the process by which new make spirit is filled to a stock container, cask, tank or optionally dispatched to an alternative location. It records key items of data such as liquid volumes, alcohol strength, numbers of casks, and whether the spirit is for Edrington or a third party.

Support Models

Edrington maintains several relatively small in-house teams for software development and support across each of its technical platforms. These teams become Subject Matter Experts in both the technical architecture and business domains. The company needed a partner who would offer innovation, service security, and resourcing flexibility – the ability to scale responsively for larger projects, while also providing a foundation of core support capability. Several distinct delivery models were developed and utilised within the partnership.

Umbrella 

• Support and maintenance of various applications, developed by both Objectivity and third parties, without requiring individual support agreements. 
• A team of Objectivity’s support engineers provides second and third facilities for the investigation and remediation of issues to ensure the continuity of operations.  

Flex 

• Small software development efforts, enhancements, or specialist resourcing that don’t require establishing an entire project team.    
• Mainly utilised for fast-tracking improvements to existing applications and reducing technical debt. 

Bespoke turnkey project delivery 

• When appropriate, a full turnkey project delivery solution is employed, thereby minimising Edrington’s resource usage. 

Full DevOps 

• This model provides extensive support to strategic areas.  
• Focused on a culture of collaboration, faster software releases, and the ability to solve critical issues quickly and better manage unplanned work. 

To oversee the above support models and activities, Objectivity provides a dedicated Service Delivery Manager.  

SDM’s responsibilities include: 

• Maintaining proper team augmentation and using agile practices such as retro meetings, daily standups, and kanban boards. 
• Coordination of incident resolution and problem investigation according to the ITIL best practices.
• Managing team effort and ensuring appropriate capacity and capability are present to deliver support services. 
• Acting as the primary contact point regarding the models and supported services.  
• Oversight over budgets and the forecasted efforts.  
• Overall high-level governance of the services. 
• Regular reporting of key metrics, such as KPIs & SLAs, as well as effort and budget usage. 
• Collaboration with key stakeholders and technology leads to ensure effective service delivery. 
• Hosting monthly service review sessions.  
• Raising requirements for necessary roles when they’re needed.  

Objectivity proved to be a perfect fit for this partnership, providing the necessary support over many years and multiple projects. The cooperation is very agile, Edrington’s needs are quickly addressed, and the service is refined according to the changing business needs. In addition to the main support models, Objectivity augments Edrington’s teams to develop features requiring niche technologies or highly specialised roles.  

The partnership established in 2014 remains strong and relies on close collaboration, open communication, and frequent adjustments of priorities. With the help of a trusted technology partner, Edrington continues to grow and realise its vision and business objectives.

The results 

Business Benefits

The long-term partnership with Objectivity provides Edrington with an agile support model matching their business requirements. Objectivity's engineers have built and enhanced many of Edrington's solutions, facilitating and improving their business processes.  

Thanks to a low churn rate and stable team composition, the same experts continue to maintain and develop solutions over the years. Objectivity’s engineers work closely with Edrington’s IT personnel, sharing common methods and approaches. Either party can enhance and maintain the applications, often working as one team. This guarantees an unmatched understanding of Edrington’s business goals and the IT landscape leveraged to achieve them. 

The supported systems keep facilitating Edrington’s growth and continuity of operations. The optimised processes are especially notable in stock management and quality control. Overall, the solutions contribute to greater stock visibility and increased efficiency of operations. As a strategic technology partner to Edrington, Objectivity has used technology and operational innovation to develop and modernise applications while providing long-term support.