Overview
George Weston Foods Limited (GWF) is one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest
food manufacturers employing over 6,000 people across 78 sites. As part of their
parent organisation, the entire corporation is the fourth largest fast-moving
consumer goods (FMCG) companies in the world.
GWF is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Associated British Foods plc (ABF), a
diversified international food, ingredients and retail group with operations
including sugar, agriculture, grocery and ingredients. They employ over 100,000
people in 46 countries.
The Challenges
Need for Robust Communication Platform
After an initial service disruption that caused issues with their internet and email, GWF Australia sought a communications platform that would be more robust and reliable for business continuity.
Challenges of a Decentralised Organisation
As a decentralised organisation, with sales agents, supply chain elements and departments spread across Australia, GWF needed to greatly increase their communications strategies and facilitate genuine, two-way, automated communications.
The Solutions
To aid GWF in realising the potential and capability of their Whispir contract, best practices and use cases were put forward to empower GWF to further leverage Whispir to transform their organisation. Initially deployed as a tool to facilitate GWF’s business continuity plan (BCP), GWF has since widened their use case scope of the Whispir Platform.
Business Continuity Plan
Emergency communications platform for potential business disruption
Customer service NPS
Customer service replies
Customer surveys
Streamlining operational processes
Notifications of product short supply
Staff/company-wide updates
Pricing changes for customers
Decreasing time resources spent on processes
Team rostering
Training and education
Lone worker ‘R U Safe’ check-in
The Results
Using the Whispir platform, GWF has further improved the effectiveness of its communications capability. Deployed across five brands, in multiple departments, the versatility of Whispir’s communications platform affords GWF with a powerful and robust communications tool. As a result, GWF are able to not just manage their organisation better but respond to communications needs as they happen.
George Weston Foods say
"Many of our employees are on the move. At best, they visit a site or a retailer once a day and spend the rest of the time on the move. With the Whispir Platform, we can easily reach these people to deliver compelling information they need to be effective and to check in on their safety with the Whispir ‘R U Safe’ service. We didn’t need COVID-19 for us to prove that we are future-ready, in fact, the current crisis only justifies our efforts and investment in our digital transformation journey which the Whispir Platform supports. It naturally puts us in sweet-spot position to absorb the shocks from the COVID-19 disruption, without any unmanageable turbulence to business operations or employee well-being."
Michael Hull
Vendor and Risk/Business and Architecture Team Lead, Business & Technology Services