Project Vanilla now live

The project sponsors and the project team are very pleased to announce that Vanilla Project has gone live as planned and without any major issues at this point. This is a major achievement and could not have happened without the drive and dedication in planning, testing and delivery of the project team and the wider impacted Colart community.

As a reminder, the objective of the Project Vanilla was to simplify Colart’s business model thereby creating greater transparency and ownership of financial performance, in so doing eliminating CIHL from the flow of products and in its place creating a direct financial and operational flow between the manufacturing entities and the distribution/selling entities.

A quick summary of the main steps:

• In 2018 but mostly in 2019 a dedicated Project Vanilla team collaborated to define and align on the new flows and the way these could be implemented in our systems. This would have an impact on all functions and business units.

• Plans were created, refined and tested throughout 2019 leading to a go-live date planned for 6th January 2020.

• From the 31st December 2019 to the 6th January 2020, the system was cutover and IT members worked to implement the agreed new rules and flows in the systems for Vanilla project.

• Last week, M3 users checked all the changes and escalated any potential issues. The Project Vanilla team met daily to ensure that all issues were resolved and tackled.

• On 15th January the project team held the “1 week post launch” meeting to ensure all is still going well. Please ensure you report to your Vanilla representative anything that raises a concern with you.

• On 12th February the project team will hold a “1 month post launch” meeting to ensure all is still going well, especially a review on the Financial side. Please ensure you report to your Vanilla representative anything that raises a concern with you before this date.

The next major test will be January month-end and the team is well prepared for this.

The project sponsors and the project team would like to thank everybody in Colart who has been involved in any way in ensuring the success of Project Vanilla, this is a great example of successful teamwork!

Jonathan Spight and Toby Russell

CFO,  CTDO