Silvio B. Szostak, general manager of the company's technology spinoff, Inventica Computacion S.A., had never heard of an intranet in September 1995. But by December of that year, Szostak had gotten approval for an intranet-based supply chain management application. That system, which was rolled out in May 1996 after one month of testing, has grown into a vital and money-saving link between the brewer and its distributors. Quilmes' distributors are responsible for shipping Argentina's most popular beer, and they own the fleets of trucks that carry it. Therefore, if a hiccup in the production system causes an order to be off by a couple of dozen cases, the distributor needs to know before the beer is loaded on his truck rather than after the truck has returned to his loading dock.
Distributors can now check the status of their orders instantly, noting discrepancies as they occur.
Quilmes also uses the Web to settle its accounts with distributors, cutting that process from two weeks to a couple of days. Lacking in-house Web expertise, Szostak enlisted Oracle Corp. as a partner in the project. For its part, Oracle planned to use Quilmes' site as a model to attract more Web business in Argentina. Realizing the marketing value of the project, the vendor wasn't exactly hard-nosed about the terms of collaboration. It didn't take long for Quilmes to volunteer payment, though.