Key Highlights
- Stemilt Growers is about sowing business seeds through its digital transformation.
- Recently, Cristian Wulf, CFO, and CIO at the Washington-based, family-owned tree fruit growing, packing, marketing, and shipping company, shared why the company cherry-picked RISE with SAP to help it shift the core processes governing its business.
Stemilt Growers went from being a one‑family business that managed and ran its orchards to owning numerous orchards, managing independent orchards, and collaborating with various organizations to market their cherries, apples, pears, and stone fruit.
Wulf said its decision to go with RISE with SAP is that with the new ERP solution, they will gain access and a view into what all their partner warehouses have, what is ready to be packed, and what is ready to be sold to match their customer’s needs.
The newly implemented SAP solution will offer Stemilt the tools and processes to make proper decisions that will boost quality and flavor for the consumers, improve service to Stemilt’s customers.
As the business starts to lean into what is possible with its investment, Wulf said they are taking a similar approach to managing these changes on the people and technology side. Business process owners and IT business partners are gaining skills to look at the business from a different perspective as business analysts who leverage leading practices, implement new processes, and reshape roles while leveraging the SAP technology as an enabler.
Importance of Changed Management Process
According to Wulf, this changed management process is vital in the journey since the company expects this investment to bear some natural fruit on the business side. It is a business-sponsored and business-driven transformation.
Wulf said that across farming, warehousing, operations, procurement, marketing and sales, finance, and enterprise-wide planning and analytics. It is a business enabler to address the industry’s changing environment and playing field.
Wulf anticipates that RISE with SAP will help the company make more informed business decisions, including shifting from being a heavily supply-based business to one that can expect and meet the demand from some of its biggest customers. He shared that a part of the reason for getting this integration and an updated ERP is to get them closer to that balance of supply and demand, even anticipating customer requests.
