Mark Anthony Group: Blending tradition with technology to craft a future-ready enterprise architecture
The perfect cocktail of IT tools, vision, and innovation
International beverage maker The Mark Anthony Group of Companies thrives on being daringly disruptive. To drive the company forward, the manufacturer of drinks such as White Claw and Mike’s Hard Lemonade needed to better align IT with its business goals. Mark Anthony chose SAP LeanIX solutions to support its enterprise architecture transformation journey.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Consumer products | Vancouver, Canada | >800 employees |
Director of Enterprise Architecture, The Mark Anthony Group of Companies
Structuring knowledge for optimal use
Founded in 1972, The Mark Anthony Group of Companies has grown from a one-person wine importer into an international beverages business. The group takes pride in its bold vision and relentless determination to create new brands of distinction that disrupt the beverage sector. Today, the diversified global company is the leading importer and distributor of fine wines and premium spirits in Canada and the fourth-largest beer company in the United States. A brewing company in Chicago and an international division round out its corporate holdings.
With an unwavering commitment to taste and innovation, Mark Anthony says its purpose is to unearth the extraordinary. The company revels in its ability to evolve, pushing the boundaries of innovation and creativity. To help ensure that every decision in the workplace supports the organization’s overall vision, the company needed to prioritize its enterprise architecture.
A team of IT professionals began by gathering information about Mark Anthony’s IT applications and data sources. “As we started asking questions, we realized that there were multiple data sources and that some were outdated and unstructured,” explains Ricardo Gonzalez, director of enterprise architecture at Mark Anthony. “In the original architecture, information was scattered. Some data existed only in the heads of certain employees or across multiple shared drives, visuals, and spreadsheets. We needed a way to consolidate and structure the information so we could make it available to everyone.”
Director of Enterprise Architecture, The Mark Anthony Group of Companies
Building an information framework using SAP LeanIX
Realizing the team couldn’t unify and structure the huge volumes of data manually, Mark Anthony chose SAP LeanIX solutions to support its enterprise architecture initiative. Using the solutions, the company meticulously documented its IT assets and business capabilities. SAP LeanIX helped the team map its IT landscape, recording the different applications and developing a unified view of the technology stack. Through this effort, the company was able to optimize costs and efficiencies. The solutions’ tools for data visualizations and continuous collaboration made the IT landscape more transparent and manageable.
SAP LeanIX offers multiple frameworks that helped simplify the mapping and documentation processes. In addition, the team used the concept of application “bodies” to help identify relationships between different application elements. The head represented business capabilities, and the torso stood for the applications or tools used by Mark Anthony. The arms signified the interfaces that enabled information exchange with other applications. The body’s legs represented the IT components that enable the applications. Using the bodies concept helped the company build the relationships in SAP LeanIX in a way that was meaningful to the team.
Yet Mark Anthony didn’t attempt to map every application at first. “We started small, beginning with a subset of applications that we wanted to target,” says Gonzalez. “From that subset, we worked to make sure the quality of the data was good. Then we could begin replicating the process to different areas of the company.”
Engaging stakeholders in the enterprise architecture initiative was another priority. The team used the survey functionality of SAP LeanIX to better understand the opinions of business process owners, application owners, and other participants. By simply answering survey questions, stakeholders were able to provide feedback about the IT landscape.
Director of Enterprise Architecture, The Mark Anthony Group of Companies
Accelerating transformation with enterprise architecture capabilities
Using SAP LeanIX to enable its enterprise architecture initiatives, Mark Anthony is maximizing the use of data while aligning technology with its business strategies. Recently the company launched a new nonalcoholic energy drink with professional soccer star Lionel Messi. Mark Anthony sells the product directly to retailers, unlike other goods that are distributed through a more complex value chain. With the help of SAP LeanIX, the company was able to adopt innovative new data-capture processes for the energy drink and better support the product line.
Transparent, simplified access to the enterprise architecture allows users to review data capture processes, identify relevant applications, and view the lifecycle of IT components. “The transparency provided by SAP LeanIX helps us anticipate a component’s lifecycle end so we can better manage applications at any point,” says Gonzalez.
The solutions also enhanced Mark Anthony’s compliance efforts. “Governance is like putting the perfect garnish on a cocktail,” Gonzalez adds. “SAP LeanIX helps keep our operations in check with data requirements for PII [personally identifiable information]. With the new product line, we are collecting and updating consumer data. SAP LeanIX is the best tool to support our PII governance, maintain compliance and standardization, and help ensure our IT solutions meet the highest standards.”
Director of Enterprise Architecture, The Mark Anthony Group of Companies