Case Studies

Milk Link

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↓ Milk Link Case Study

Milk Link is the third largest integrated dairy business in the UK, providing their members with the opportunity to process and add value to the milk that they produce.  They are also manufacturers of a variety of dairy products, including being one of the largest suppliers of cheese to British supermarkets.

Established in 2000, Milk Link has evolved to meet the changing requirements of a difficult marketplace and now supplies the majority of food processors and retailers.  The relationship between CCL and Milk Link began from a contact CCL Director Mark Grisdale in 2005, which led to a request for assistance with their current initiative Project Rainbow and ongoing support agreements.

Led by CCL consultants David Whiston and Rob McWha, Rainbow was set to involve an SAP implementation across the whole business.  Milk Link had grown significantly through recent acquisitions and was becoming a victim of its own success, suffering from a disparate infrastructure and business systems. 

Carla Martin is the Service Delivery Manager at Milk Link who liaised with CCL throughout this project and as the subsequent relationship developed between the two organisations.  According to Carla; "In order for Milk Link to operate at a group, divisional and site level effectively it was essential to consolidate infrastructure and core business application.  From the cold call which led to a personal contact, I felt that CCL could offer valuable input."

Crucially, CCL were able to offer assistance with legal wording and contract negotiations which reduced the need for lawyers, allowing Milk Link to make significant savings.  Carla said; "We only found it necessary to utilise the lawyers to ‘rubber stamp' the final version, which was great for our budget as the CCL daily rate was closer to the lawyers' hourly rate!"

Following this initial piece of work, and because "CCL were easy to deal with, delivered on time and in budget" Milk Link has continued to utilise CCL as independent consultants.   So far they have completed various pieces of work including recruitment, assessment of dispute resolution provision and independent project QA and CCL look forward to continuing to work with Milk Link in the future.