How Stone & Wood Turned Its Business Performance Around by Structuring Its Operations

Last Updated on July 25, 2023 by Owen McGab Enaohwo

As the quality assurance and sensory coordinator at Stone & Wood, maintaining quality assurance and smooth operations is the crux of Tom’s duties. Following regulatory standards is mandatory in the industrial environment that he operates in. But stepping up to the plate is a struggle in the absence of an effective system. The binders and Microsoft Word documents the organization was working with were insufficient. Tom took up the responsibility to resolve the problem. After trying several systems, he found the solution in SweetProcess. He tells us how SweetProcess enhanced the efficiency of his team members with hands-on information to execute tasks successfully. 

About Stone & Wood 

Stone & Wood is a brewing company that produces quality beer from its home in the Northern Rivers region of Australia. 

With the mantra “Good Beer is Our Thing,” the organization takes pride in catering to the needs of its community and environs. It boasts of a highly trained team that ensures all its products have their signature taste before leaving the factory.

Committed to enhancing the lives of its employees, the organization offers them an opportunity to be shareholders in the business via its Employee Share Scheme, which has seen over 70% of them being shareholders.

Stone & Wood is currently home to about 150 employees. 

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The Biggest Pain Point

Maintaining quality assurance has been a top priority for the organization from the onset. Besides being consistent with the taste of its beer, it has to abide by the regulatory standards in its industry or risk being sanctioned. Living up to these expectations requires following production and administrative processes down to the teeth. But working with binders and Microsoft Word for documenting their processes initially was a far cry from getting it right. 

Updating work procedures and processes was another challenge. Employees working with outdated procedures could alter the entire production, leaving the team with no option but to start afresh—a big waste of time and resources.  

“We always struggled with following the due process, and to be honest, it’s something we still do. But now, it’s far easier to get the guys on board with the procedures because they can access it from their phone, and we know that they are accessing the most up-to-date. We can see that they’ve signed it off. Previously, there wasn’t any sort of tracking as to whether someone had looked into a procedure. That’s really made the difference.”

Discovering the Solution Called SweetProcess

The difficulty in streamlining the processes at the organization was a clear indication of a need for a better system. If they were going to adopt a system, they needed to get one with the most value. 

Tom resorted to trying out different systems to find the best fit. Ease of use was a top criterion on his list—he wanted a system that his team members could use easily.

“I did look at several different options online. I can’t recall the specifics, but ultimately, it did boil down to a couple, and I liked SweetProcess from its ease of use and how flexible the sign-up was.”

Thanks to the 14-day free trial feature on SweetProcess, he was able to figure out that SweetProcess was the right fit for his company. By the end of his trial, he was hooked.

How SweetProcess Repositioned the Organization’s Operations for the Better

There were existing needs for SweetProcess in the organization, and as they adopted the software, they put it to use immediately. The motive was clear—either SweetProcess would deliver or not. Tom gives us more insights into how SweetProcess performed tremendously.

1. Simplifying Employee Onboarding and Training

Bringing new workers up to speed with how things are done in an organization takes well-planned employee onboarding and training efforts. Ordinarily, the employee training and onboarding process is demanding for both the organization and the employees. While the organization provides the needed resources, the new entrants are under pressure to acquire knowledge in the shortest time possible. 

According to Tom, employee training and onboarding is one area that his organization has felt the most impact of SweetProcess. 

“It gets a lot of use for onboarding new staff. We often get casual labor for a single day’s work. To do that, they have to go through safety induction, quality induction, and various other little documents, so we’ve actually put them all into SweetProcess. We can assign that process as a task to someone, and they can read through it at their own pace, tick it off, and then the manager can come back and see that they have done all of that. It’s working well for us in that regard.”

2. Updating Latest Versions 

Updating work processes used to be so much work for Tom and his team. They would go through a long and tedious process just to incorporate the latest piece of information into their documents. But with SweetProcess, it has become one of the easiest things to do. Tom reveals that this has greatly impacted his day-to-day routine at work. 

“The biggest win for me is, I’ll go out to review a particular facet of the process, and I’ll be able to pull up the procedure on my phone and edit it on the spot and take photos on the spot. So, having it as a mobile platform out in the production environment that we exist in is an invaluable tool. Previously, it was—take a few photos, email them to yourself, take them back to your computers, sit down, translate what you remember from out in the floor onto a Word doc. It’s made it a lot easier to be able to update things on the fly.”

3. Creating a Centralized Knowledge Base

Creating a level playing field for workers includes making information accessible to everyone. The organization recognizes the need to provide its employees with all the information that they need to excel at their jobs, and it’s using SweetProcess to distribute knowledge. Rather than passing information to team members individually, the information is saved in SweetProcess and can be accessed by employees. 

“Other things that we started using SweetProcess for is what we call need-to-know. Things that we want to ensure people are across, we actually put those communications into SweetProcess. Because it requests their sign-offs, we can see that they’ve seen it and read it.”

4. Meeting Regulatory Standards

Showing evidence that it adheres to regulatory standards is a requirement for the organization to operate within the confines of the law. One of such requirements is a certification by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). With SweetProcess, the company can prove that its employees have been properly trained on the job in line with the regulatory standards. 

“It really helps us a lot with standard requirements that are out there like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) where you have to demonstrate that your employees have been trained and show procedure documents, so it ticks all the boxes there.”

Customizing Operations with SweetProcess

The organization started with using SweetProcess in the production department. Having recorded huge success, other departments are showing interest in adopting it. 

Tom further reveals that the support they get from the team at SweeProcess has been very useful in adopting the system to their specific needs. 

“I have to say that the SweetProcess team has been really supportive. When we’ve had certain little features that we felt might help us out a little, they’ve been right on board in making slight tweaks—helping us rearrange the structure of how we’re using it so that it’s more accessible and easier to use.”

Do You Want to Grow Your Business?

By simply adopting SweetProcess, Stone & Wood has been able to enhance its human resources and strengthen its operations. The same opportunity is open to you. You can take your business to newer high heights by streamlining your operations with SweetProcess. Sign up for a 14-day free trial right away. No credit card is required.

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