Beverage distributor undergoes strategic IT assessment to enhance security and support future growth

Client background

This franchise distributor represents top-selling products across various beverage categories, including soft drinks, juices, sports drinks, water, coffee and tea. As a full-service distributor, they cater to over a million consumers, ensuring their products are stocked, sold, delivered, serviced and displayed efficiently. Their commitment to providing high-quality products through well-trained employees at fair prices has been key to their success. Additionally, they demonstrate a strong commitment to their team members and the communities they serve by supporting diverse programs and events throughout their franchise area.

The business challenge

The company faced cyber-attacks and sought assistance to mitigate future security threats. They aimed to assess their current IT operations to better position themselves for future growth. Without a comprehensive IT strategy, they collaborated with an external consultant to evaluate their current IT capabilities and identify opportunities to address both immediate and long-term needs. The company is committed to ensuring they are well-prepared for future growth while effectively addressing significant security challenges.

Strategy and solution

Baker Tilly conducted a thorough evaluation of the company's IT function, focusing on how the IT structure—including people, processes and technology—supports both current and future needs. Through interviews with company leadership and IT’s business customers, the strategic assessment identified opportunities within IT operations, infrastructure, applications and cybersecurity that could significantly enhance the value IT delivers to the business. Based on the assessment, the following themes emerged:

1. End user support: Implementing systems to manage and track end user support requests will enable the company to establish SLAs, measure performance to KPIs and better anticipate future capacity needs, ultimately improving overall efficiency and customer satisfaction.
2. Planning and prioritization: By adopting a proactive approach to planning and prioritization, the company can better execute longer-term, strategic initiatives, leading to more effective resource allocation and improved project outcomes.
3. Date-driven decision making: Integrating data across business lines will facilitate coordinated pricing and offerings to customers, and streamline performance measurement across the organization, enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency.
4. Cybersecurity: Strengthening cybersecurity training, policies, procedures and vendor management will provide a more robust defense against cyber threats, ensuring the company's data and systems are well-protected.

As a result of the engagement, Baker Tilly identified numerous opportunities for enhancing governance, organizational support, applications and data, infrastructure and cybersecurity. These improvements will enable more informed decision-making, standardized and streamlined cybersecurity measures, and ensure that IT effectively leverages its staff and investments to support both current and future growth.

Baker Tilly then worked with the company to prioritize and sequence (now, next, later) the initiatives into a project road map. This will provide IT leadership with the direction it needs to support the company’s strategic goals, modernize operations and utilize the latest technologies to drive innovation.