Unilever wanted a single solution for each of their South Africa sites to work from. They needed to move away from inefficient legal research and manual processes to a smarter way of working.
The challenge
Unilever, headquartered in the UK is a global consumer goods business, selling products in around 190 countries. They own over 400 brands and have operations spanning across all continents that specialize in the manufacturing of these goods - from food and beverages to home care and beauty care.
In South Africa alone, Unilever has 8 individual sites operating, and at each of these locations, they were using different regulatory tracking methods, some were manual e.g. spreadsheets, some were digital and some had nothing in place.
Senior management also wanted the ability to see an overview of each site’s activities. Initially this solution needed to service the 8 sites in South Africa, however ultimately, they wanted a global solution that could be rolled out to other locations and standardize their processes.
Unilever was also looking for a platform that was ISO aligned, and offered additional services such as live chat and auditing support.
They needed a single solution that could be broken down by individual site and legal register, but also required help with tracking these laws for ongoing changes.
The solution
After trialing Libryo against another solution for 12 months, Unilever awarded the full contract to Libryo and phased rolling this out to the 8 different sites. Libryo was chosen thanks to its trustworthy tracking, ease of use and the platform made it financially efficient for Unilever by minimizing the time spent on legal research.
The Libryo platform delivers each site its relevant EHS legal requirements and standards at a municipal and national level. Individual Libryo Streams are created for the sites and configured to their exact business activities, jurisdiction and location - so they know with precision what their law is and what is needed to comply.
Automated tracking technology ensures that every regulation is updated within the platform whenever changes are made at the source level (e.g. government). The system then notifies each user both on the platform and via email about the legal update.
To avoid reading the entire piece of legislation again, Libryo summarizes the update, making it quick and easy to take action if needed.
Users are also able to set tasks for themselves or others, create reminders and upload applicable documents, enabling a single place for collaboration and tracking information.
The team also benefit from Libryo’s live chat support who can help direct them to certain legislation or navigate their compliance tasks, as well as professional services such as remote audits.
The implementation of Libryo took one month to complete, including the configuration of each Libryo Stream and the onboarding and training of 140 users.
The benefits
Each site’s reporting is now uniform and accessible to senior management for an overview of their compliance and platform activities.
Libryo has revolutionised the way the teams interact, record and track their legal requirements. Every user knows their specific regulations and have the peace of mind that if anything changes, they will be notified promptly.
Overall, Libryo has saved the organisation many hours of legal research and juggling multiple systems and processes. This streamlining of activities and elimination of legal research is saving costs for Unilever year upon year.
The Libryo Tasks module is another useful tool, used to assign tasks to individuals and set up reminders. This has been used to update permits and legal requirements for our sites that are due for renewal or as an action reminder, helping teams to keep up to date with each site’s requirements.
Roberta Ceriani, SNA Safety Coordinator at Unilever, said: “The Libryo Platform has been very useful in my workday and the system’s ease of use has given us the legal information required when needed. The Libryo customer success team is very quick to respond to our queries and have always provided a clear understanding to the questions asked. They always find time to do ongoing training sessions to keep all users updated on new & existing innovations in their program updates.
"We have also seen that Libryo’s tools have provided us with ways to do self- assessments with the Libryo Actions module, enabling us to check our site’s compliance status. It is also possible to request external legal support to do a validation exercise on your compliance levels. Libryo’s legal team provides exemplary feedback and recommendations on how to close any gaps identified.
