Glanbia Direct
A case study
The challenge
Glanbia Ireland were looking for an effective way to trade a set of products with fluctuating inventory levels. At the same time, they were more broadly looking at opportunities to enter the digital trading arena. With Nui, providing a new sales channel for this product set provided a perfect test case for trialling a new digital marketplace.
Backdrop
Glanbia Ireland decided to take on this new challenge against a backdrop of extraordinary global upheaval. The evolving pandemic conditions expanded the willingness in the dairy industry to widen the net in search of alternative sales and outreach methods.
Glanbia Ireland believed a digital trading option would not only create a new sales channel opportunity for their buyers, but also provide fresh insights as to how their customers might adapt to a new way of doing business.
How have things worked historically?
Glanbia Ireland’s sales processes, up to this point, had been primarily underpinned by phone, email and/or direct in person contact. However, with travel severely restricted, the traditional role of sales staff shifted away from sales conferences and in-person meetings to more multi-faceted approaches.
Rather than undertake a complete overhaul of their existing sales processes, Glanbia were interested in finding a digital approach that would augment their existing strengths.
In short, they were interested in a new, innovative option that would happily cohabitate with the methods they already had in place.
The proposed solution
The initial goal for any new platform is to provide dynamic product and sales information to a diverse spread of customers in a manner that facilitates an intuitive trading process.
Glanbia Ireland identified a customer profile for those they believed would be most receptive to transacting digitally. To work with these customers, Glanbia Ireland would need a solution that was:
- Quick and easy to implement
- GDPR compliant
- Safe from Malware and other cyber attacks
- Able to meet the specific needs of their identified customer profile
Partnering with Nui had a number of benefits. First, it allowed them to draw on Nui’s depth of implementation and development experience. Additionally, Nui have a proven on-boarding and implementation framework to ensure all participants are quickly trained and confident using the platform.
Once the final requirements were agreed to, live trades were completed on the new platform in a matter of a few short weeks.
Going digital
The Glanbia Ireland digital platform, Glanbia Direct, which debuted in 2020, quickly established itself as a success. The solution was not only an effective tool for selling inventory, but they could also use the platform to respond to market demand at key junctures.
Now that the platform is established, it has become an additional instrument that their sales team are comfortable utilizing. Glanbia Ireland’s customers are comfortable and adept at using the platform and Glanbia have been able to broaden their customer base through the platform, giving more buyers access to their products.
"The Glanbia Direct solution has transformed our sales process. The platform is intuitive to use and our customers have effortlessly adapted to this new way of doing things. Nui were incredibly easy to work with and provided indispensable strategic and technical guidance throughout the entire development process."
Two keys to success
There were two main factors that drove the successful development and subsequent launch of Glanbia Direct.
Effective partnership
Glanbia Ireland and Nui worked together to define technical requirements that would fulfil Glanbia Ireland’s specific needs. This up-front collaborative effort was crucial to streamline the development process. Nui brought with them the foundational building blocks and from there regularly checked in with Glanbia Ireland to validate changes. Glanbia Ireland’s involvement in this review cycle was indispensable.
Implementation is easy
The implementation roadmap for the platform is fast and seamless. Nui supplied all the on-boarding materials and training delivery — both to internal Glanbia Ireland staff as well as buyers. This created an engaged and competent set of participants who were comfortable using the platform before any trading began.
Where are we now?
After over a year of using the platform, Glanbia Ireland have a deeper understanding of how their platform can be used to more actively engage their customer base, create competition and ensure the current market price is achieved.