Client background
Our client is one of the fastest-growing producers of fruits and vegetables in North America. By innovating cutting-edge genetic processes and cultivars within high-tech production facilities, they grew from a few hundred million dollars in revenue to a multi-billion-dollar agriculture production and distribution enterprise in only a few years. Now the company is turning to information technology to drive its next phase of growth with a goal of becoming a $10B+ brand.
The challenge
The client's investment in high-tech facilities and cutting-edge processes hadn't been matched by their information and data systems. Rapid growth, combined with acquisitions of other businesses, had left them with an increasingly muddled IT environment: a mix of disparate ERP systems, out-of-date applications, and customizations pushed beyond the point of upgrading.
The result was a data strategy that couldn't keep pace with the business. Producing basic operational reports meant days of manual data entry into massive spreadsheets, reports that were often obsolete by the time they were published. Functionally specific reports took even longer, requiring data to be pulled from multiple systems across the business. Actionable business intelligence was more aspirational than achievable.
Before approaching SoftServe, the client had already started modernizing their core ERP and operational systems to make them consistent and accessible enterprise-wide. But data infrastructure alone isn't enough, it only creates value if the business can act on it. The client needed a business intelligence strategy that would deliver results in the short term while supporting longer-term goals in analytics, AI, and machine learning, including crop yield forecasting and computer-vision-based quality processes.
The solution
SoftServe began with a thorough discovery and needs analysis. Our team mapped the client's systems and critical data, then worked directly with business subject matter experts to shape a consistent, coherent data strategy roadmap. Each step was evaluated and prioritized by potential business impact before the completed roadmap was presented for approval.
That roadmap identified more than $50M in operational savings opportunities, spanning production, distribution, quality assurance, and sales. Based on these findings, the client greenlit a pilot program to build two critical operational dashboards, replacing the spreadsheets that had defined their reporting process. Delivering them meant building the core business intelligence infrastructure and pipelines from the ground up, while defining and vetting the technical standards to support them.
Value delivered
- Real-time visibility. The new dashboards eliminated days of manual data collection and preparation. Decision-makers across the organization can now access the information they need immediately, not once a week.
- A foundation for what's next. With core data and analytics infrastructure in place, the client can move forward on their long-term BI and analytics goals, guided by the roadmap SoftServe built with them.
- $50M+ in identified operational savings, with a clear, prioritized path to realizing it.
- Momentum toward AI/ML goals, including crop yield forecasting and computer-vision-based quality processes, now built on a data foundation that can support them.
One of the company's financial analysts summed up the shift simply: the new dashboards were a "game-changer."
Let's talk about how SoftServe can transform your business intelligence, streamline operational costs, and enable data-driven success in agriculture.
