Using actionable intelligence to build cohesion across a diverse business

Bright Food, a state-owned Chinese food and beverages company, owns a rapidly expanding international portfolio of brands from Europe to Australia via its Hong Kong subsidiary, Bright Food International (BFI).

In 2021, PwC China helped BFI to implement a human-led, technology-driven risk management platform for BFI to detect and mitigate the diverse risks associated with its overseas entities in an intelligent, timely manner. In this first phase, the platform was first piloted in BFI, Hong Kong and Italy. During the programme’s second phase in 2023, the platform was updated with more risk indicators, including supply chain and working capital, and better AI-enabled technology. It was also rolled out to additional BFI subsidiaries in Shanghai and Australia.

• See risk: We worked with BFI to create a unified list of core important and operational risks which aligned with strategic and management goals across regions. The list balanced domestic and international regulatory requirements with BFI’s global risk management priorities.
• Take risk: The new platform helped BFI to navigate complex overseas risks effectively, harnessing both internal and external information to enable data-supported decision-making and power growth.
• Manage risk: We developed a set of tailor-made metrics through big data and GenAI modelling, which incorporated real-time risk alert and response mechanisms to support rapid, international risk management and build resilience.

When shoppers buy a bottle of Filippo Berio olive oil in Italy or Tnuva milk in Israel, they probably do not realise that these national brands are owned by Bright Food, a Chinese state enterprise based in Shanghai. The group’s expanding overseas food and beverages portfolio extends from Europe to Australia, with an international distribution network that is bringing Bright Food products to more and more customers around the world.

Bright Food faces the challenge of uniting diverse international management teams and workforces around the same corporate culture and mission in order to achieve its goal to become one of the world’s leading global food and beverages companies. In the past, Chinese state enterprises that have acquired international businesses have often struggled to overcome this hurdle. Instead, communication challenges and a failure to understand the corporate cultures and business practices of overseas subsidiaries have often led to misunderstandings, confusion and even a total breakdown of trust.

Bright Food International (BFI), the Hong Kong-based subsidiary which manages the group’s global portfolio, was conscious of these issues when it engaged PwC China to develop a risk and regulatory management framework and solution. BFI wanted a people-led, technology-driven platform to help the group surmount internal language, culture and communication barriers. In addition, BFI needed the platform to address increasingly stringent requirements by China’s state assets regulator for large companies to establish transparency throughout their foreign holdings.

PwC China was fully equipped to help BFI capture, visualise and evaluate risk across its diverse international portfolio. Our risk services team brought a wealth of regulatory, technical and sector expertise to the development of a platform that has enabled BFI to anticipate and avoid threats and hazards with greater foresight and agility.

The platform developed by PwC China’s risk services team for BFI uses SAP’s latest agile, cloud-based and compatible business risk management technologies to deliver a complete overhaul of the company’s governance, risk and compliance (GRC) architecture. The platform is designed to balance domestic and international regulatory requirements with BFI’s specific global risk management needs.

To meet these goals, our risk services team pioneered an integrated solution empowered by big data algorithms and applied statistical models to simulate and analyse behavioural traits. As a result, the platform both identifies risks across BFI’s global business operations and triggers alerts when potential deviations from trusted behavioural trends occur.

An advanced open-source Large Language Model (LLM) has since been integrated into the solution, enhancing BFI’s ability to conduct real-time compliance reviews in areas such as third-party risk, contract content risk, and cargo ownership.

PwC’s platform enables more agile risk monitoring and faster alerts across BFI’s diverse global portfolio - for example, by eliminating many time-consuming manual reporting tasks, and by generating instant data and insights into current operations worldwide.

The outcome of this approach is already visible throughout BFI’s international network. Beyond its governance, risk and compliance (GRC) functions, the platform serves as an international touch point where BFI can discuss operational issues and business opportunities as soon as they arise with senior management teams at foreign subsidiaries. At a lower level, the platform also acts as an information-sharing hub for managers at individual Bright Food companies around the world. Ultimately, customers also benefit from these interactions, which enable Bright Food to make, distribute and sell better products globally.

BFI’s new risk management platform depends critically on being “people-led”. With the global group’s internal communication in mind, we enabled leadership teams and managers at subsidiaries around the world to access the platform easily for business analytics.

In addition, the platform enables international colleagues to share their regional and industry perspectives with the parent group. All these exchanges are conducted in English, where previously the use of different languages on various national platforms formed a barrier to integrated, transparent global risk management and the development of a single worldwide corporate culture.

BFI’s platform illustrates how our “people-led” risk management solutions deliver measurable operational and commercial benefits in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, including:

• More management time gained to improve products
• Integrated oversight of regional and national markets
• Sharing of local insights to build a cohesive global culture