Recipe For Success: Kraft Discovers RWD’s Hidden Ingredient
It is common for businesses to have a well known product associated with their name, regardless of other products in their portfolio. For RWD’s customer, Kraft Foods, it’s Mac and Cheese. Although most people are aware of Kraft’s breadth of products, the pervasiveness of their brands worldwide may not be as well-known. Brands like Milka, Jacobs, Toblerone and Lu are consumed by millions of people everyday. “Our products can be found in many households around the world,” says Jan Mears from Kraft Foods. “90% of US households have Kraft’s products. Our products are sold in 155 countries every day, whether it is a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese for dinner or a cup of Jacobs coffee enjoyed in a café in France”. Kraft partnered with RWD and SAP to rollout uPerform in 2007; in the world of learning, RWD is synonymous with training. However, just as Kraft offers more than cheese, RWD offers more than training. In the summer of 2008 Kraft decided to extend its use of uPerform to Kraft Europe. Kraft partnered with RWD to determine the best way to leverage the initial Kraft uPerform rollout to meet the needs of Kraft globally. “We knew RWD’s product, uPerform, was strong and could assist us with our global SAP rollout,” said Gina Kiefer. “Primarily, we were interested in creating training materials to help manage content”.
Order Me a Double
As part of the first go-round of services, RWD delivered standard server installation and training to the Kraft project team members. From this initial experience, which included in depth training sessions for uPerform Administrators and Authors, a trust was built. While the knowledge-sharing continued between RWD and Kraft, uPerform bloomed into the multi-continent platform that it is today and Kraft began to recognize an expanded audience and usage of uPerform throughout its organization. uPerform is currently being used in both North America and Europe with plans to continually expand.
RWD partnered with Kraft to configure the uPerform environment for a multi-country implementation. The initial scope of work grew from a single English-only, uPerform implementation, consisting of SAP training materials into a multi-country, multilingual, multi-application ready platform. After in depth analysis of the existing Kraft environment and the needs of Kraft globally, RWD recommended that Kraft implement a global solution in a single uPerform instance.
As part of the strategy and planning sessions, Kraft made the choice to upgrade to uPerform v. 3.0 as a step toward expanded usage, to better accommodate their growing environment. The upgrade of uPerform gave Kraft access to the advantage of uPerform’s re-record functionality. This will be necessary as Kraft creates new
documentation in more than ten languages.
Managing the Transition
Kraft has truly embraced uPerform as a premier learning tool for SAP training and end-user performance support. Kraft extended the initial U.S. only implementation of uPerform into a scalable, multi-language friendly environment to accommodate a diverse end-user population. The management of this transition was completed through an exceptional, joint effort of Kraft and RWD teams.
To maximize success and keep maintenance centralized, the Kraft uPerform environment consists of a recommended three-tier server architecture for the entire end-user population. With this in place, Kraft is able to easily manage end-user accounts, upgrades and patches without maintaining multiple environments. Key ingredients to the success of this architecture are the use of LDAP synchronization and Single Sign On, both of which allow for streamlined management of the end-user population.
As of September 2008 Kraft upgraded to uPerform 3.0 to incorporate Multi-language output; document management; and CRM functionality. Kraft continues to develop documents globally and incorporate existing English documents into a single, easily managed, global SAP project. Kraft will continue to work with RWD teams in Europe and the U.S. to develop new end-user training materials.
Kraft’s continuing partnership with RWD is expected to deliver acceptance of uPerform across the organization and lead to a rollout of the platform in the Asia-Pacific region.
To date, Kraft’s enthusiastic embrace of uPerform has driven the project’s success both in North America and Europe.
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