HEINEKEN’s metamorphosis into a future-ready, digitized enterprise
HEINEKEN, a globally celebrated brewer with over 300 distinct brands and presence in more than 190 countries, has consistently prioritized future-proofing in their strategic roadmap. Inspired by this forward-looking vision, HEINEKEN, in 2021, unveiled their Evergreen Strategy, anchored in sustainable growth, digital innovation and long-term resilience.
At the heart of this strategy was an audacious ambition: to become the world's best-connected brewer. Recognizing that this aspiration could only be realized through heightened digitization, HEINEKEN embarked on a mission to digitally transform their front end while modernizing and simplifying their back end.
To create a strong “Digital Backbone”, HEINEKEN set out on a comprehensive digital transformation journey, focusing on digitizing their route to consumers, unlocking the value of data, simplifying and automating end-to-end business processes, and building a secure and modern technology landscape. As part of this initiative, HEINEKEN looked to address their fragmented technology landscapes and create a “loosely coupled, tightly integrated” landscape—with a lean digital core and standardized cloud-based business platforms.
The HEINEKEN–IBM partnership goes way back to 2013, and it has evolved in major ways, even tackling fundamental improvements to maximize efficiencies. The companies collaborated to adopt an Agile DevOps way of working at HEINEKEN’s Digital & Technology organization, including setting up a future-proof “Polaris” services and delivery framework.
As part of the Digital Backbone program, the two companies also collaborated to spearhead a hybrid cloud-based, modular IT landscape. Together, they established a lean and clean global SAP S/4HANA core on Microsoft Azure cloud. They also integrated it with best-of-breed business platforms and a centralized data lake to further enhance advanced analytics and data-driven insights capabilities. They jointly developed a series of automations using Terraform and Red Hat® Ansible® (link resides outside of ibm.com) to speed up key processes including OS preconfiguration, hardware and virtual machine provisioning, security hardening, SAP preconfiguration, SAP S/4HANA installation and restoration.
HEINEKEN worked with IBM Consulting® and other technology partners to build and deliver a new Digital Backbone, which went live across three operations in Rwanda, Egypt and Serbia in 2024 after a successful pilot.
The data transformation journey was another major undertaking, beginning with the development of data management blueprints to harmonize operations across different operating companies (OpCos) and strengthen data governance, architecture and lineage tracking, making data more accessible and reliable. The partnership also established a self-service analytics platform on Azure Data Lake, enabling business users to access real-time insights and advanced reporting capabilities.
The team delivered a range of data services, including the creation of data ingestion pipelines, technical architecture and engineering expertise, with IBM providing training, change management and process optimization support. HEINEKEN is also transitioning their data operations from traditional DataOps to AI-powered IT operations (AIOps).
The data transformation journey resulted in the development of a centralized Metadata Hub that provides a unified metadata repository and supports metadata-driven decision-making. The hub was designed with a user persona-based approach, tailoring insights for different stakeholders. Additionally, IBM led a large-scale global data migration initiative for HEINEKEN, ensuring a seamless transition while maintaining data integrity.
HEINEKEN has collaborated with IBM to infuse automation and AI into their digital operations for many years, and has recently begun leveraging IBM® Consulting Advantage to set up AI assistants to deliver various services in motion. In collaboration with Microsoft, the team supported HEINEKEN in transforming their intelligent chatbot, Hoppy, from a low-code app to a pro-code app, with various integrations.
Over the past decade, HEINEKEN and IBM have partnered on a transformative journey of co-creation, co-execution and co-innovation.
One of their earliest undertakings, the Agile DevOps transformation, has cultivated a culture of transparency, speed and continuous collaboration between product owners, OpCo business users and delivery teams in the HEINEKEN–IBM partnership, jointly accelerating the delivery of business value.
Another major, high-returns endeavor that the company undertook was the hybrid cloud adoption with their SAP S/4HANA landscape. This yielded significant benefits, including reusable scripts for future environments, enhanced deployment efficiency and quality, and boosted productivity. Notably, deployment time plummeted by 95%, from 1 to 2 days to just 45 minutes. Moreover, hardware and virtual machine provisioning was accelerated dramatically, with provisioning time dropping from 10 to 15 days to under 5 minutes. These gains enabled rapid scaling, improved customer service and unlocked new ways of working, positioning HEINEKEN for future innovation and agility.
HEINEKEN’s data transformation journey bore fruitful results as well. By implementing over 54 automation use cases, the company optimized storage and system performance, reducing their data footprint by more than 500 GB. The increased automation has also amplified operational efficiency and empowered teams to concentrate on high-value initiatives.
Guided by the principles of the Evergreen Strategy, HEINEKEN is driving focused transformations that harness the power of digital innovation. Leveraging technology, the company is delivering streamlined, efficient and meaningful experiences for customers, suppliers and employees alike, continuing their journey to become the best-connected brewer.
HEINEKEN (link resides outside of ibm.com) is the world's most international brewer. They are the leading developer and marketer of premium and non-alcoholic beer and cider brands. Led by the Heineken brand, the group has a portfolio of more than 340 international, regional, local and specialty beers and ciders. HEINEKEN operates breweries, malteries, cider plants and other production facilities in more than 70 countries.
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