Clasen Quality Chocolate: one live picture of a global cocoa supply chain.

Most mornings, Casey Johannesen, Cocoa Sourcing Manager, started by finding out where his supply was. He logged into carrier portals one by one, copied out container numbers and ETAs, and re-keyed them into spreadsheets so the rest of the business had something to work from.

CQC imports cocoa from multiple origins on long ocean transits across Asia-Pacific and Atlantic lanes. The data describing all of it existed. It sat in separate carrier portals, inboxes and spreadsheets, none of which talked to each other.

So a simple question, where is this container and when will it land, meant checking several systems and trusting that nothing had been mistyped on the way.

Four teams, four sets of numbers.

The hour Casey lost each morning was the visible cost. The bigger one was downstream.

Sourcing, supply chain, production and finance each rebuilt their own version of the picture, from different and often inaccurate numbers. A stale or mistyped ETA flowed into production schedules, into commitments made to customers, and into the figures finance planned against.

CQC's ingredients sit behind some of the world's best known retail and CPG brands. Those partners expect consistency, so even a small data gap on a long cocoa transit could reach them.

The morning hunt is gone.

CQC rolled Beacon out across its upstream cocoa lanes. Container and ETA data that used to sit in portals and inboxes now updates automatically in one place.

All four teams see the same live picture of where the cocoa is, at the same time, without anyone assembling it by hand first. The hour Casey spent chasing data now goes on acting on it.

From one picture to every team's view.

With one trusted view in place, CQC is starting to use Live Boards to give each team and partner the view that matters to them, without emails asking for an update.

The same shared view of performance is opening the door to working more closely with suppliers. It also supports Responsible Roots, CQC's programme of traceability and sustainability across the cocoa supply chain, which depends on accurate, current information.