CUSTOMER STORY
Suntory Global Spirits Optimized Costs & Staffing To Stay Competitive in Any Market
Longtime Visier customer Suntory Global Spirits continues to leverage Visier's workforce analytics solutions to enable smarter decision-making and stronger business performance. Recently, they empowered executive leadership with robust cost-governance reporting, gained essential control over expenses, and optimized their talent acquisition funnel to respond effectively to shifting markets.
INDUSTRY
Manufacturing
HEADQUARTERS
New York, NY
EMPLOYEES
6,000
Suntory Global Spirits is an American beverage company and the third-largest producer of distilled beverages worldwide, including popular global brands such as Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Laphroaig, Canadian Club, and more.
With Visier’s people analytics solutions, Suntory Global Spirits has:
Enabled cost-governance reporting for executive leadership
Optimized TA funnel to better respond to shifting markets
Empowered all HR functions with data
“We chose Visier for three reasons: Workforce data impacts the business. It's user-friendly and transforms our raw data into bite-sized analyses for our users. And, the fact that Visier can analyze data from multiple data sources."
Colleen Houlihan
VP of Global Total Rewards, People Solutions, & People Technology
CHOOSING VISIER
From manual data pulling to instant business-critical insights from a single source of truth
A Visier customer for many years, Suntory Global Spirits has grown their workforce analytics practice from just the analytics team to where “every function within People & Culture is using the tool,” to make data-informed decisions, says VP of Global Total Rewards, People Solutions & People Technology, Colleen Houlihan.
Suntory Global Spirits originally chose Visier in 2020 to help establish a more data-driven approach to workforce management. Their decision to buy was based on three key factors:
- Out-of-the-box solutions and the potential to scale. Colleen cited the ready-to-go content Visier offers out of the box as a differentiator and a means to get to insights faster.
- The platform's usability. Visier could "take our raw data and transform it into bite-sized analyses for our users," making complex information accessible and understandable across the organization.
- The ability to integrate data from disparate systems. Colleen highlighted that Visier "can take data from multiple data sources, including HRIS and an ATS (Applicant Tracking System), our budgeting tool, our engagement survey data tool, and a number of other tools."
Now, in 2025, through significant change management efforts and by keeping analyses and dashboards "fresh, making sure that they're addressing needs," Suntory Global Spirits and Visier created a single, centralized tool for workforce analytics that is informing more sophisticated analyses, such as those they are focused on now—cost governance and staffing according to market demand.
How workforce data affects business performance
In this video, Colleen talks about how Suntory Global Spirits tracks people costs to benefit both the company and the employees, as well as the crucial role of workforce analytics in improving business performance.
THE OUTCOMES
Data-enabled and ready to compete in fluctuating markets
The implementation and expanded use of Visier have yielded real business results for Suntory Global Spirits, directly addressing their initial challenges and enabling more strategic people management and smarter decision-making, even in the face of fluctuating markets.
Enabled cost governance reporting for executive leadership
One of the key outcomes is the enhanced ability to perform cost governance. Visier has allowed them to create and provide executive leadership with clear metrics around critical cost drivers like headcount, open roles, and compensation costs Colleen emphasized the importance of this, stating, "your people are your highest cost... As much as you can control and react to different trends through looking at that data on a regular basis, the better you can run your business, the better performance you'll have as a business."
An optimized TA funnel to better respond to shifting markets
By focusing on metrics around requisitions such as open roles, time-to-fill, and TA capacity, they have built a stronger understanding of their talent acquisition pipeline. This allows their TA team to be "ready to staff appropriately for open requisitions and roles" as market conditions fluctuate, ensuring the business has the necessary talent to operate effectively, as Colleen explains in the adjacent video.
Empowered all HR functions with data
Suntory Global Spirits has successfully empowered all HR functions with data, an effort, Colleen emphasized, to get users to "embrace it and become really smart users of it.” This widespread access to transformed, bite-sized analysis enables more HR professionals to leverage data to inform their work, becoming better partners to the business units they support.
Learn how Visier is transforming workforce productivity at top global companies
Meet Visier's Workforce AI Solutions
Discover how Visier’s AI-powered solutions give you a Workforce AI Edge—unlocking the full potential of your people and organization.
Maximizing Workforce Productivity & Performance: The Role of AI
Discover how AI-powered workforce intelligence boosts productivity, reduces inefficiencies, and drives business impact.
5 Trends for 2025: Embracing the AI-Driven Workforce
This report equips business leaders with the insights and strategies needed to lead their organizations confidently into an AI-enabled future.
About Visier
Visier is the recognized global leader in people analytics, workforce and compensation planning, embedded solutions, and GenAI for people answers. At the core of Visier’s innovations is a simple premise: People impact is business impact, and you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Visier gives people-powered organizations the tools and insights to drive productivity, performance, and business outcomes through people impact. Founded in 2010 by the pioneers of business intelligence, Visier has over 65,000 customers in 75 countries, including enterprises like BASF, Panasonic, Experian, Amgen, eBay, Ford Motor Company, and more. Visier is headquartered in Vancouver, BC with offices and team members worldwide.
For more information, visit visier.com