Customer Solution Case Study

General Mills Uses Cloud Solution to Create New Consumer Business Channel

Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Manufacturing—Food and beverage

Customer ProfileOne of the world's leading food companies, General Mills is ranked No. 166 on the Fortune 500 list for 2011. The Minneapolis, Minnesota–based company employs approximately 33,000 people worldwide.

Business SituationGeneral Mills wanted to find a techno-logical solution for offering gluten-free products and information directly to consumers, without incurring the cost and complexity of a typical IT system.

SolutionThe company worked with IT solution provider Brand Journey Venturing to create Gluten Freely, a cloud-based channel based on the Windows Azure platform.

Benefits Vibrant business channel Cost-effective business platform Comprehensive development

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“With Windows Azure, and by working with BrandJourney Venturing, we brought a new business idea to market about twice as fast and at half the cost of using a more traditional IT development and brand agency model.”

Dom Alcocer, Marketing Manager of New Ventures, General Mills

Gluten, a grain-based protein common in a modern diet, can cause health problems for a small but growing number of people who have sensitivities to it, including those with celiac disease. To help consumers who had trouble finding and buying gluten-free products, as well as to provide helpful information, one of the world’s leading food companies, General Mills created a direct-to-consumer retail channel that is hosted on the Windows Azure platform and was designed using Microsoft development and ecommerce products. By working with solution provider BrandJourney Venturing, the new General Mills business channel—called Gluten Freely—has resulted in rapid consumer adoption and enthusiasm.

SituationAs one of the world’s leading food manu-facturers, General Mills keeps a close watch on consumer trends, health advancements, and other opportunities to grow its product lines, which include famous brands such as Betty Crocker, Cheerios, Nature Valley, and Pillsbury. Accordingly, increased public awareness about the use of gluten in foods has been closely monitored by the company.

Gluten is a protein naturally found in grains such as wheat, barley, and rye that helps dough to rise and gives certain foods a chewy texture. It is typically found in breads, cakes, pasta, pizza, and other popular foods, many of which General Mills produces.

Unfortunately, gluten can cause adverse reactions in some people, most notably, those who suffer from an autoimmune disorder called celiac disease, symptoms of which can include fatigue and digestive problems. Medical experts estimate that 1 in 133 people has celiac disease, and that more than 97 percent of those with the disease are currently undiagnosed. Many more people are believed to have some level of gluten sensitivity even without the disease.

For consumers, finding gluten-free products and information about gluten-free diets has been frustrating and time-consuming. Recognizing this growing need, General Mills started making and pro-moting a wide range of gluten-free food products, such as Betty Crocker gluten-free desserts and reformulated Chex cereal products.

However, the company needed a more focused way to get the products and related information to the public. “We realized that people with celiac disease, and others who have some kind of gluten sensitivity or who just want to live a gluten-free lifestyle, were having particular difficulty in simply locating all of the great foods that they need to make this diet come to life for them,” says Dom Alcocer, Marketing Manager of New Ventures for General Mills. “They couldn’t find places to buy the products, and they had to spend a lot of time sifting and sorting through the Internet to find recipes and other information about gluten-free diets.”

Alcocer and his colleagues had specific ideas about how to best tackle the problem. They wanted to create a direct-to-consumer online channel that would allow customers to buy gluten-free products directly from General Mills. And, in building the channel, they wanted to avoid the high costs and headaches of using traditional on-premises hardware and software that would require ongoing IT expense and maintenance.

General Mills began talking with BrandJourney Venturing, a solution provider with experience in building direct-to-consumer businesses. David Wolfe, Managing Director of BrandJourney Venturing, says the challenge of the project was both daunting and exciting.“We were under pressure to deliver a scalable new business in record time,” says Wolfe. “We evaluated possible technology platforms and recommended that General

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“We evaluated possible technology platforms and recommended that General Mills use a cloud-based solution for the capabilities, and for speed, flexibility, and cost reasons.”

David Wolfe, Principal, Brand Journey Venturing

Mills use a cloud-based solution for speed, flexibility, cost, and scalability reasons.”

SolutionGeneral Mills and BrandJourney Venturing proceeded to create Gluten Freely, a new cloud-based consumer business channel for gluten-free products and related information. The site gives consumers access to a broad range of resources—including recipes, blogs, community forums, and medical facts about gluten—along with coupons, a product locator, and an online store where they can choose from a selection of more than 400 gluten-free products, which are then shipped directly to the consumer’s door. The company sells its own products along with non–General Mills products in an effort to provide the largest possible selection to consumers.

General Mills and BrandJourney Venturing decided to host Gluten Freely in the cloud by using Windows Azure, the development, hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. “We felt the best route to go was to use a cloud-based solution running on Windows Azure,” says Alcocer. “Having a solution in the cloud is the most efficient way for us to build up capability, one consumer at a time, while saving dollars and time every step along the way.” Gluten Freely took about six months to develop and went live in March 2011.

In addition to Windows Azure, the solution uses other Microsoft products. One of these is Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, a cloud-based version of the Microsoft enterprise sales and marketing software,

which General Mills is using for its ecommerce analytics activities.Gluten Freely was designed using familiar Microsoft Visual Studio development tools and the Microsoft .NET Framework. Product and customer data is stored in Microsoft SQL Azure, a self-managed, multitenant relational cloud database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. The solution also supports federated identity with social networking activity, prompting users to create a link when users log on to sites like Facebook or Twitter.

In a related project, BrandJourney Venturing worked with General Mills and Microsoft to develop a custom, touch-enabled application that will run on Windows 7–based tablet PCs, Designed for a separate business venture, this application will take advantage of the same underlying cloud services and infrastructure as Gluten Freely. The tablet PCs will be used by independent consultants who will provide in-home cooking lessons using General Mills products and Gluten Freely recipes.

BenefitsGluten Freely has already been a great success for General Mills. The new business channel is generating a lot of consumer enthusiasm, as evidenced by substantial site traffic, sales, and positive social media feedback.

By building the cloud-based solution on Windows Azure, the General Mills and BrandJourney Venturing developers were able to quickly build a direct-to-consumer channel that meets a growing consumer market. The Windows Azure platform

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“Having a solution in the cloud is the most efficient way for us to build up capability, one consumer at a time, while saving dollars and time every step along the way.”

Dom Alcocer, Marketing Manager of New Ventures, General Mills

continues to provide a cost-effective, agile environment for both development work and ongoing site maintenance.

Vibrant Business Channel, Consumer EnthusiasmThe initial response to the Gluten Freely site was overwhelming, immediately generating the kind of consumer “buzz” that is highly valued by consumer products companies.“We’ve gotten lots of great feedback on our Facebook page and on our Twitter stream. In our first day, we had orders from more than 25 states; and of course, we now deliver to every state in the continental United States,” says Alcocer. “With Windows Azure and the other Microsoft products, we were able to create and deploy a solution that met a growing market need. It gets great branding and advertising out there in a new way, and people love being able to go to one place to shop for gluten-free products and have them shipped right to their doors.”

Wolfe adds that by building the solution on Windows Azure, General Mills and its customers can be assured that financial and other information related to transactions are handled with confidentiality. “What Windows Azure gave us right out of the gate was a platform for creating a solution where compliance and data integrity were protected,” says Wolfe. “We have great confidence in the Microsoft data centers that run Windows Azure. This is critical to the success of the project, because we’re working with a lot of transactional information, including credit card data and customers’ personal information. The Windows Azure platform provides a level of

security and robustness that supports a rock-solid experience for consumers.”

Compelling, Cost-Effective Business PlatformAlcocer says the Windows Azure pay-as-you-go hosting model is a boon for the company because it’s more flexible than a traditional on-premises IT infrastructure.“Windows Azure allows us to add infra-structure based on consumer demand—essentially, one consumer at a time—instead of forcing us to buy and build servers and systems based on guesses of what we’ll need,” he says. “The General Mills New Ventures group has been tasked with creating new ways of doing business. With Windows Azure, and by working with BrandJourney Venturing, we brought a new business idea to market about twice as fast and at about half the cost of using a more traditional IT development and brand agency model.”

The Gluten Freely site complements activity done by the company’s retail chain partners because it delivers educational materials that can be used by retailers. The service also helps reach customers who are in remote or rural locations and have limited access to well-stocked retail outlets.

Equally important is the competitive advantage that it provides for General Mills. As the site draws more consumers to the channel, the increased customer base draws more activity from partners and from competitors selling their products through Gluten Freely. This growing channel activity leads not only to more revenues, but also to more opportunities for deeper analytics

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“What Windows Azure gave us right out of the gate was a platform for creating a solution where compliance and data integrity were not issues."

David Wolfe, Managing Director, BrandJourney Venturing

by General Mills that can be used to drive the business forward.

Comprehensive Development Environment Spurs Innovation The decision to build Gluten Freely on Windows Azure meant that Wolfe’s team and the General Mills developers had access to a comprehensive development environment.

“With Windows Azure, we could use a comprehensive Windows development environment, which helped us create a flexible, highly scalable, and comprehensive e-commerce platform in the cloud,” Wolfe says. “Our work wasn’t always easy, because we were breaking new ground with the integration of e-commerce, accounting, and customer data in the cloud. But we had all the tools we needed, plus rapid assistance from Microsoft, to solve our development questions.”

Developing on the Windows Azure platform also laid the foundation for future business initiatives. The Gluten Freely site took about six months to develop; the Windows 7 tablet solution, which was cre-ated using the same tools and technology, took about three months. “That time will probably shrink even more for future efforts,” says Alcocer. “This is a huge com-petitive advantage for General Mills in terms of speed to market and the inte-grated analytics that can help drive new business models.”

Wolfe notes that, by taking a chance with emerging cloud technology, General Mills is demonstrating business and technology leadership, and how a large company can

use innovative technology solutions to directly engage with consumers and bring in entirely new communities of customers.

“We feel that General Mills is really a leader right now in building brand new business models in the cloud,” Wolfe says. “The Windows Azure solution not only allows General Mills to bring products to con-sumers in North America, but also lets it expand into emerging markets. Everyone seems incredibly happy with what we’ve been able to achieve.”

Windows Azure PlatformThe Windows Azure platform provides an excellent foundation for expanding online product and service offerings. The main components include:

Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.

Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL Azure offers the first cloud-based relational and self-managed database service built on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 technologies.

Windows Azure AppFabric. With Windows Azure AppFabric, developers can build and manage applications more easily both on-premises and in the cloud.− AppFabric Service Bus connects services and applications across network boundaries to help

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"We had all the tools we needed, plus rapid assistance from Microsoft, to solve our development questions.”

David Wolfe, Managing Director,BrandJourney Venturing

developers build distributed applications.− AppFabric Access Control provides federated, claims-based access control for REST web services. Windows Azure Marketplace

DataMarket. Developers and information workers can use the new service DataMarket to easily discover, purchase, and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform.

To learn more, visit: www.microsoft.com/windowsazure

Related Resources and InformationTo learn more about the Windows Azure platform, visit the website at: www.windowsazure.com Learn: Channel9 Windows Azure Training CourseRead: Security Best Practices for Developing on the Windows Azure PlatformDownload: Windows Azure Training KitDownload: Windows Azure SDKMicrosoft Cloud Power Microsoft offers a complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet business needs, including solutions for advertising; commu-nications (email, meetings); collaboration (document storage, sharing, workflow);

business applications (customer resource management, business productivity); data storage and management; and infrastruc-ture services. In addition, customers can take advantage of an entire ecosystem of solution providers and Microsoft partners.

For more information about Microsoft Cloud Power, go to: www.microsoft.com/cloud

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about BrandJourney Venturing products and services, call (757) 515-5555 or visit the Web site at: www.brandjourneyventuring.com

For more information about General Mills products and services, call (800) 248-7310 or visit the Web site at: www.generalmills.com

To view the full story plus video of General Mills and other success stories, visit the Microsoft Success Web site at: www.microsoft.com/business/success/

Software and Services Windows Azure Platform− Windows Azure− Microsoft SQL Azure

Microsoft Dynamics− Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Windows 7

Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Professional Edition Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 4