Alf. Mizzi & Sons Marketing Group Case Study

Alf. Mizzi & Sons Marketing Group (AMSM) is a leading importer and distributor of a wide range of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) to the retail and foodservice sector. Having been set up over 100 years ago, the company invests continually in technology, staff development, infrastructure, and quality standards to keep its place as the market leader in an increasingly competitive industry.

With hundreds of employees, over 150 leading brands to manage, and making over 600 deliveries a day, having optimised internal processes is essential, as is the necessity to have all the different systems integrated together to ensure effective communication and the smooth running of the business.

AMSM approached Cleverbit Software to help leverage their investment in SharePoint, and more specifically, customise it to their needs and integrate it with other systems.

According to Bryan Saliba, Information Systems Manager at AMSM, “Off-the-shelf software offers a quicker and more cost-effective solution than developing something from scratch. Yet, the potential solutions did not meet our business’s requirements. This is where practical and effective customisation with robust integration comes in.”

“SharePoint forms a central part of the company’s daily operations, and for this reason, we had to ensure that all the workflows connected to it were as efficient as possible. Amongst other things, we successfully collaborated on two important projects – an automated email filing workflow, sharing and classification project and a Meeting Minutes repository and approval workflow module.”

Matthew Rizzo, Cleverbit Software CEO explains. “The first project involved developing a system to leverage out-of-the-box SharePoint and third-party tools to share emails within the organisation. Employees were used to an application running on top of Lotus Notes to achieve similar functionality. With SharePoint Online replacing Lotus Notes, we had to rebuild this functionality and smoothly migrate all the data. Our team set up a user-friendly way to help users upload emails from Outlook into SharePoint. The email is automatically routed to the appropriate location within SharePoint and shared with the relevant individuals. OOTB SharePoint screens and third-party tools were used for most user interface components. We migrated the data that spans more than 20 years into SharePoint and helped all departments move to the new platform without disrupting the day to day operations.”

“The second project involved developing a system for managing meeting minutes through light customisation of the SharePoint site. We created a workflow to allow administrators to create new meeting areas for different committees that are structured in a manner that was in line with users’ requirements. Administrators could easily define the various stakeholders within each area (e.g. readers, editors, and approvers). OOTB SharePoint document management features were enhanced via custom workflows to ensure that company-specific policies around approvals and sharing were implemented.

Bryan Saliba concludes. “The two projects, as well as other light customisations that were carried out, have made life simpler and contributed significantly to more effective workflows and communication. Having a partner with the level of experience and expertise that Cleverbit Software brings to any project ensures that you can reach the full potential offered by solutions such as SharePoint.”