MEET OUR CHALLENGERS

In the face of difficulties, excellent teams and mentors are source of my confidence. Our culture of never being satisfied inspire me to rise to the challenge. At Budweiser, all the departments and breweries come together to share and collaborate, so that you never feel alone in the journey. This has been indispensable for my success."

I joined Budweiser APAC in April 2008. I had been a TS manager and then Plant Manager for Suqian Brewery before I was appointed as the Plant Manager for Xinxiang Brewery in 2018.

We were faced with many challenges. The first one, immediately, post construction of the Suqian Brewery, was to infuse large number of fresh talents very rapidly to ensure the stable operations of the new plant. I spent a lot of time in recruiting. I designed recruitment campaigns, customised skills trainings for each employee, and organised diversified team building events to ensure that every new employee joining us felt welcomed and a part of the Budweiser family. We applied processes to reward great performers, cultivated and developed talents by giving opportunities, and built a highly engaged team.

All these efforts were rewarded, when my team won the 'Excellent Team' award four years in a row. In 2017, Suqian Brewery ranked as No. 1 among all breweries in the world in the company's Brewery Excellence Program, and was certified as World-class Brewery in 2017.

My new role of Plant Manager for Xinxiang Brewery has many new challenges, however, I have full confidence because we have a great team of company owners energized by a shared dream to brew the best beer and bring people together for a better world.

Taking an undefined challenge and transforming it into an opportunity, this is Budweiser APAC\'s culture. For me, this has meant - confidence to take my team to achieve our collective dreams."

Post my graduation in 2016, I joined BU South East Asia office as a Process Engineer. In September 2018, I received a promotion to the role of Brewing Team Leader in Vietnam.

Faced with an undefined and new challenge, I was suddenly thrust into team management, taking on new initiatives such as people management, engagement measurement, KPI tracking and project management.

With great support from my plant manager, local and zone brewing team, I overcame my lack of experience in management to successfully build a team with our culture at its core. When I look at our transformation, I can say with pride that my team hold certain inter-company records in Safety, People Turnover, Quality Measurement and Efficiency.

These are testimony to how far we have come as a team and to the mentor networks within Budweiser APAC.

"You always get the new challenges every day, you always have new things to learn, and you never feel bored at Budweiser APAC, which attracts me most to work here every day."

After my Master's in Economics degree from University of Bochum in Germany, I had studied and worked in Germany for 6 years. I joined Budweiser APAC HQ in a Financial PF&A role in Procurement in 2012.

Over the last 8 years, what I have loved most is that there is very little repetition in what I do. Often, we take up projects, where we are not expected to know what to do. Finding out solutions along the way and building up a successful working team in the process are the biggest positives. This way, we all contribute to the high-energy in the workplace.

Another great aspect of working here is the people culture– who are ready to support others, because at the end of the day, we are all owners of this company. During my experience of stepping out from my comfortable zone into a new role, I had my manager and colleagues who supported me, shared their experiences, transferred their knowledge, trained and coached me on how to deliver from day 1. I successfully transitioned into the new role, and was promoted and recognized here for my work. This is exactly how we develop and advance talents in the company.

"What attracted me the most to Budweiser was the culture of meritocracy and ownership. Particularly, the chance to lead and shape new projects in areas outside of my comfort zone."

After my MBA at CEIBS, I joined Budweiser APAC as an Insights Manager at the Shanghai HQ. Recently, I was appointed the role of VP of Insights & Innovation.

In my current role, one of the biggest challenges I noticed is our long time to market for rolling out innovations. This handicap meant that we couldn't innovate fast enough to meet our consumer's evolving needs and often lost business opportunities.

Our Innovation community across marketing, sales and supply teams took this challenge head-on. Faced with an out-of-the-box problem, we came up with an out-of-the-box solution titled "100 day innovation". The objective behind this idea was to launch innovations in 100 days, which was less than 1/3rd of the usual time taken.

To achieve this crazy feat, we had to fundamentally rethink the whole journey of innovation. Launching a successful innovation across an organization involves buy-in from cross-functional teams across different locations – so this new approach required approval not just from one person but involved a cross-functional mindset change.

When I look back at this successful initiative, empowering teams to come up with solutions to the challenge and being open minded to their feedback are the pivotal differentiators that helps pioneer innovation within the industry.

"My passion for beer, coupled with my belief that beer brings people together for a better world– resonated strongly with me and hence I chose Budweiser APAC."

I graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology Management in 2018. After that, I joined Budweiser APAC Shanghai as a Global Management Trainee (GMT) in Feb 2019.

The ability to grow in the organization at the pace of my talent and the opportunity to work on projects where I have no prior experience or knowledge is phenomenal. Specifically, I remember a specific project, when I rotated in Zone Logistics team recently. As a fresh GMT, I was entrusted with a Project Manager role for the Korean transportation project. Because of an epidemic situation in Korea, I couldn't travel to Korea and had to support the team remotely. I took extra effort to familiarize with the Korea operation mode by attending remote workshops, and asking help from various people in the company.

Seeing me struggle initially, my line manager stepped in and showcased how I could prioritize tasks and create action plans. They also highlighted the differences between China and Korea businesses. By listening to people around me and then demonstrating resilience in the face of a new challenge, I established an end-to-end Korean logistics process with Budweiser APAC PMs and vendors both on-board.

"Budweiser is literally the 'Fastest' Moving Consumer Goods Company – the only way to keep up with this unmatched pace is to keep learning and investing in yourself."

I graduated from the Renmin University of China with a degree in Chinese Classic Philosophy. After my degree, I immediately joined the Budweiser Beijing office as a Global Management Trainee (GMT). Thanks to Budweiser APAC's unique talent-centred culture, at the beginning of my career itself, I have benefited from a deep-learning curve, augmented by supportive colleagues.

I was tasked with working in close coordination with our sales team to drive improvements in the sales data accuracy and build up a monthly sales dashboard. I took stock of the current process and broke it down into several components, making it easy to understand the rationale behind what we do and why we do it. Then I took these underlying messages and straightforward tasks to the sales teams.

Meeting the sales team half-way, understanding their perspective and then supporting it with data involved a lot of to and from. This helped in two ways - cultivating a data driven mindset within the sales team and improvement in the sales data accuracy.

With my efforts, not only was the monthly dashboard built up, but the overall competency of sales team also improved.

In Budweiser, you'll be exposed to the most cutting-edge practice in the industry, and be part of something big. It's the perfect place for people who aim to be a game changer & real influencer.