TORONTO — Lactalis Canada has revealed the winners of its NEXT Ventures – the company’s second-annual internal innovation competition designed to bring new ideas to the forefront by re-imagining and re-thinking processes, technologies, products and business models through future thinking, creativity, and digital transformation.
With the 2023 theme of Continuous Improvement, the internal crowdsourcing program saw close to 100 submissions from employees at all levels and areas across the organization. A range of submissions were underscored by emerging digital technologies including AI and Machine Learning to enable process enhancement and efficiency; automation; enablement of value-added tasks; service-level improvement; innovative packaging; and optimized collaboration.
Aptly named DemandSense, the winning project focuses on improved forecasting accuracy for customers through digital transformation using enhancements such as AI technology. The project team included members of Lactalis Canada’s Yogourt & Cultured Division Amanda d’Halluin, Trade Marketing director; Diego Avendano, category insights analyst; Philippe-Olivier Provencher, Revenue Growth manager; Rozenn Juguet, Supply Planning manager; and Patrick Belgar, Category Information manager.
As a key component of the NEXT Ventures program, the winning project will now go into multi-year incubation with a dedicated project team, key resources, tools and internal and external expertise to build and implement this technology.
“I’m thrilled to congratulate the winning team, the finalists and all of the innovators who have truly epitomized the spirit of our NEXT Ventures program. The range and caliber of submissions for this year’s program demonstrates, yet again, the incredible talent, innovative spirt and intrapreneurship that exists within Lactalis Canada,” says Mark Taylor, president and CEO, Lactalis Canada. “Interestingly, digital transformation was a common theme throughout this year’s program and we look forward to leveraging the expertise and leadership of Lactalis Canada’s digital lab, LLabs, in mentoring, driving and incubating both the winning project and other ideas on a go forward basis.”
