Accelerating Digital Transformation in Food Manufacturing with Pillir's Low-Code/No-Code Platform

Industry trends reveal that organizations leveraging accelerated digital solutions can dramatically reduce development cycles—often achieving speeds up to 20 times faster than traditional methods. This case study explores how a leading global food manufacturing organization transformed its operations by deploying mission-critical applications quickly and efficiently using Pillir’s low-code/no-code platform.  Before the transformation, the organization depended heavily on spreadsheets and manual processes, resulting in lengthy development cycles and cumbersome approval processes that hindered operational agility.

Pre-Transformation Challenges

• Long Development Cycles: Traditional application development was too slow to address urgent operational needs.
• Cumbersome Workflows: Manual, time-consuming approval processes delayed critical decisions.
• Operational Inefficiencies: Outdated methods increased costs and limited responsiveness to market changes.

Challenge

The organization faced significant hurdles in its digital transformation journey:

• Lengthy Time-to-Market: Slow development and deployment of new applications impeded timely responses to business demands.
• Inefficient Approval Processes: Manual workflows not only increased the risk of errors but also delayed decision-making.
• Scalability & Agility Constraints: There was an urgent need for a solution that could accelerate application development and streamline approval processes to support continuous innovation, quality, and compliance.

The strategic goals were clear: reduce development time, cut costs, and enhance overall operational efficiency and quality control.

Solution

Pillir is a next-generation, low-code/no-code platform designed specifically for SAP-centric manufacturing and supply chain organizations. It empowers teams to develop and deploy mission-critical applications up to 20x faster, driving rapid digital transformation across the enterprise.

Key Features & Unique Value Proposition

Accelerated App Development:

Intuitive drag-and-drop tools enable the rapid creation of applications, reducing development cycles significantly.

Universal Workflow Inbox:
A single, centralized workflow inbox is available company-wide to manage all workflow items. This feature accelerates processes by ensuring that every pending task is easily visible and actionable.

Email-Integrated Approvals:
Approvers can review and act on workflow items directly from their email inbox. With authenticated email addresses, approvals or rejections are executed seamlessly without the need to log into the application.

Mobile-Enabled Workflow:
The workflow is accessible via a mobile app, ensuring that users can approve or reject requests on the go, thereby enhancing responsiveness.

Intuitive UI Aligned with Brand Guidelines:
The user interface is designed to be both intuitive and in harmony with the organization’s brand guidelines, promoting ease of use and consistency across all applications.

Cost-Effective Pricing:
A monthly active user pricing model ensures that costs are aligned with actual adoption, reducing the total cost of ownership.

Unified Development Environment:
Pillir offers a single platform to build a wide array of applications—including workflows, mobile apps, and composite apps —tailored to the specific needs of the organization.

Delivered Solutions

Leveraging these robust features, the platform enabled the rapid development and deployment of several critical solutions:

Procurement Authorization Request:
A suite of apps for requesters and approvers.. This solution empowered procurement teams to create requests and submit them for hierarchical approvals, streamlining the procurement process and reducing reliance on spreadsheets.

Product Approval:
A mobile solution designed to enhance the efficiency of the new product approval process. It captures and stores information from approvers and viewers at each stage, minimizing the need for project manager follow-ups through automated notifications and progress tracking. The final solution comprises a project manager app and an approver app.

ISDR (Integrated System for Document Requests):
A workflow solution for raising change requests and tracking them until final approval or rejection. This solution, which includes initiator and approver, integrates with SharePoint for secure storage of data and forms.

Final Campaign / Creative Approvals:
A suite of apps designed to accelerate the approval process for marketing campaigns and creatives. With a multi-tiered review process—from regulatory and legal teams to C-level executives—the system streamlines project requests based on project size and cost.

Brand Agency Brief Approvals:
Tailored for brand agency activities, this solution accelerates the approval process through multiple approval heads depending on the project’s scale and budget.

Shopper Agency Brief Approvals:
Designed for on-road shop branding activities, this suite streamlines approvals through various levels of authorization.

Packaging Design Approvals:
Focused on managing product packaging branding, this solution accelerates the approval process with segmented approvals based on project size and cost.

Forecast Solution:
A suite of apps for requesters and approvers that facilitates the submission of forecast data by the forecast manager. The export demand planner can then review, verify, approve, or reject the data and subsequently export the approved forecast.

• For all these workflow applications, a common master data management app was implemented, integrating with SharePoint to store relevant creatives, forms, and additional data.

How Pillir Addressed the Client’s Pain Points

By leveraging its comprehensive features, Pillir’s platform dramatically reduced the time required to digitize processes and deploy mission-critical applications. The Universal Workflow Inbox and email-integrated approvals streamlined decision-making, while mobile accessibility ensured continuous responsiveness. These innovations, combined with an intuitive UI and unified development environment, empowered the organization to innovate rapidly and maintain high standards of quality and compliance.

Implementation & Empowerment

Deployment Approach

The rollout of Pillir’s platform was executed seamlessly with minimal disruption to existing operations. The intuitive low-code tools allowed the IT team to digitize core business processes quickly and eliminate the inefficiencies of manual workflows.

Team Empowerment

Comprehensive training and onboarding initiatives equipped IT teams—regardless of coding expertise—to harness the platform’s full potential. This empowerment fostered a culture of innovation, enabling the organization to swiftly respond to urgent operational needs and continuously optimize processes.

Measurable Results & Outcomes

Accelerated Time-to-Market:

Mission-critical applications and process improvements were deployed up to 20x faster, development was completed in just a few weeks rather than months than traditional development approaches and with minimal resources (2 developers)

Cost and Efficiency Gains:
The streamlined development process reduced labor costs and development expenses. Faster deployment enabled quicker operational responses and lowered the overall cost of digital transformation.

Operational Impact:

• Error Reduction: Automation minimizes manual data entry errors, enhancing data accuracy.
• Faster Processing: Key operational tasks, such as quality checks and inventory management, were executed more rapidly.
• Enhanced Quality and Compliance: Digital quality control systems reduced product defects, improved traceability and ease of maintenance after go-live, and ensured regulatory compliance.

Conclusion 

Pillir’s low-code/no-code platform has revolutionized the digital transformation journey for this leading food manufacturing organization. By dramatically accelerating application development and deployment, the platform has enabled faster time-to-market, reduced operational costs, and empowered IT teams to drive continuous innovation while upholding high quality and compliance standards.

Interested in learning more about Pillir’s rapid application development platform? Modernize your SAP systems with the EdgeReady Cloud. Build unlimited apps for free today - Contact our team to learn more.