J&K Confectionery is an expert collective that doesn't manufacture products, it guides an entire supply base to make great ones. They source, develop and distribute world-class chocolate, biscuits and confectionery.

We sat down with Rebecca Smith, Senior Technical Manager, to talk about where quality sits in J&K's business, what pushed them to Backbone and what's already changed.

Quality as a core principle and driver

As a Senior Technical Manager at J&K, Rebecca helps steer a company where quality is treated as a massive, non-negotiable priority. Because J&K sits as an expert collective between major retailers and manufacturers, their core value lies in delivering superior quality products. That makes quality more than a technical function. It is one of J&K’s three core pillars, alongside people and strategy and a key reason customers choose J&K rather than going directly to factory sourcing.

But supporting quality across a broad supplier base also creates a significant administrative workload. Gap analyses, audits, procedures and document reviews all need to happen before the team can get to the work that really requires their expertise.

"It's just the small things that seem to take ages that take value away from what you should be doing," Rebecca says. "You end up doing the same documents, the same questionnaires, the same everything multiple times."

The problem: quality can’t be understood from a spreadsheet

Instead of spending time where quality actually happens like inspecting equipment, engaging factory teams and evaluating live operations, J&K’s specialists were getting bogged down in repetitive paperwork. Running a standard gap analysis on a site required the team to spend days locked in a boardroom, manually working through requirements and asking surface-level compliance questions.

“You can verify processes in a spreadsheet, but until you are on the floor, inspecting the equipment and building relationships with the people running it, you don't actually understand the factory.”

The solution: Turning quality admin into background work

The transition didn't start with a painful software RFP, it began with a, "aha moment” during a webinar that backbone co-hosted with BRCGS. 

The initial use case was clear: audits. J&K regularly performs gap analyses when assessing new sites and suppliers, making the audit workload one of the biggest opportunities to give the quality team time back. But as the team explored Backbone, they found more ways to use it.

They even invited the Backbone team to a supplier event in Manchester to demonstrate the technology to their entire supply base, sparking a wave of interest from their own partners in Belgium and the UK.

The result: more capacity for the work that matters

The operational impact was immediate. Audit gap analyses that previously took J&K’s technical team days can now be completed in minutes with Backbone. The team also uses the quality assistant to simplify other time-consuming tasks like updating annual procedures. Instead of opening document after document, the team can immediately surface the procedures that need attention.

Two different tasks, but the same result: less time spent searching, checking and copying and more capacity for the work that requires actual quality expertise.

As J&K expands its use of Backbone, the goal is to move more of the repetitive quality administration into the background. 

The team redirected those reclaimed hours directly into active plant floor engagement. Instead of evaluating quality on paper against a standard, J&K's quality experts now spend their time building real operational insights alongside the production teams they work with.

The real return: a shared culture of quality

For J&K leadership, the return on investment extends beyond operational efficiency. It’s about changing how quality is owned across their entire supply chain.

"Quality isn't just a technical function, it’s a business responsibility. Offloading the day-to-day admin allows our team to educate everyone else that quality belongs to the whole business."

The dream state is to have all J&K suppliers connect to Backbone, creating a more collaborative approach to quality management. As more suppliers join, the network becomes more connected, with standard changes and data flowing automatically without anyone having to think about them.

The goal isn’t to make the quality team faster at admin. It’s to make admin less of their job. As Rebecca puts “Backbone takes away all of the frustrating admin jobs that don't add to your life or work so you can actually do bits of the job that you enjoy and that are useful.”

About J&K: Established in 2003, J&K Confectionery is an expert collective specializing in the sourcing, development, and distribution of premium and seasonal confectionery products.