Del Monte Foods
Location
Walnut Creek, California USA
Solution
Kenandy ERP
Industry
Food and Beverage
Del Monte Foods Case Study for Kenandy ERP
The Company: About Del Monte Foods
Right now, inside your pantry or simmering on your stovetop or filling your pet’s food bowl, there is more than likely a Del Monte Foods product (or two or three).
The fact is, Del Monte Foods products are found in eight out of ten U.S. households. One of the country’s largest consumer food and pet products companies — with more than $3.8 billion in net sales, the Del Monte Foods portfolio includes such iconic brands as Del Monte®, Contadina®, Milk-Bone®, and Kibbles ‘n Bits®.
The Situation: Difficult to Deploy
While having such a powerful and growing brand portfolio has enabled the company to significantly expand its market share, the company’s own on-premises corporate ERP was not only costly, it was increasingly difficult to deploy to new lines of business, and was nearing the end of its support life.
The Solution: Kenandy ERP
Del Monte needed a new way forward in ERP; they found it in the Kenandy ERP cloud.
Flexibility + Enterprise-Class Capabilities
The company’s recent acquisition of Natural Balance Pet Foods, a leading producer of premium pet foods, presented the perfect opportunity to begin the rollout of Del Monte’s new Kenandy cloud ERP system.
“We decided to put Natural Balance on our chosen ERP system — Kenandy — from day one, so they would be up and running quickly, using Del Monte’s enterprise standards,” explains David McLain, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Procurement Officer at Del Monte Foods. “This also helps us quickly assess potential future expansion within Del Monte.”
Among the many reasons Del Monte chose Kenandy was its flexibility. “Unlike most other ERP systems that offer cookie-cutter capabilities, Kenandy is extremely flexible,” says Stuart Kowarsky, Vice President of Operations at Del Monte’s newly acquired Natural Balance Pet Foods. “This flexibility allows us to keep our costs down while providing excellent customer service. For example, we can easily add capabilities, and adapt the system to our clients’ needs.”
The Results: Kenandy ERP Implementation Benefits
Going Live in Under 90 Minutes
Inheriting the benefits of the Salesforce Platform on which it was built, Kenandy ERP not only provides flexibility and extensibility, but it’s also extremely fast to deploy. Deployment is so fast, in fact, that Kenandy CEO and Chairman Sandra Kurtzig made a commitment to Del Monte to go live with Kenandy at Natural Balance just 90 minutes after the acquisition was complete. The system was up and running even faster than that.
“And this was for a complete ERP implementation, including order-to-cash, planning and production, procure-to-pay, and global financials,” says Kurtzig. “You’ll never see this kind of speed with legacy software, which often takes months, if not years, to deploy.”
Natural Balance’s Kowarsky concurs, saying, “This is probably the fifth or sixth ERP implementation of my career, and it was the smoothest transition I’ve ever experienced. Not only did Kenandy accelerate our integration with Del Monte in a number of areas — including customer service, logistics, and the entire supply chain network — we were able to see these synergies immediately.”
Kowarsky credits Kenandy’s Professional Services team for enabling the successful transition. “In my estimation, Kenandy has the number one services team in the business,” he says.
Better-Running Acquisition, Better-Running Enterprise
Del Monte is realizing a number of benefits from its deployment of Kenandy at Natural Balance, including better visibility through a “single source of truth” and the elimination of many manual processes. Kenandy also enhances productivity in production, quality management, shipping, and receiving, while seamlessly integrating Del Monte’s best practices — an all-around win-win.
“We’re confident that Kenandy will live up to its promise of providing a complete, enterprise-ready ERP solution that has quick time-to-value,” says Del Monte’s McLain. “At Natural Balance and in our corporate systems, we’re replacing a patchwork of applications with one unified, extensible solution that will grow and scale with Del Monte’s needs. We’re optimistic that Kenandy will help provide us the visibility we need to improve the business now, and into the future.”