Zespri has gone live with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, to support the kiwifruit supplier’s ability to provide the highest quality produce.
Zespri went live on November 1, and it signals the start of the first phase in its ambitious, multi-year Horizon transformation programme, which aims to standardise and automate Zespri’s processes, boost operational efficiency and offer a platform for growth and innovation.
By implementing SAP’s offering, Zespri hopes to be more effective in providing kiwifruit to its customers, and the company says fostering a more robust, transparent and reliable process will support its entire product delivery system, from receiving sales orders to payments for produce, all the way to distribution.
Zespri’s quality management solutions will include proof that the product has been grown and handled under regulatory, customer specifications and consumer expectations.
Implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud has benefited nearly 1,000 full-time employees and contractors in offices across 17 countries, with Zespri also carrying out its most extensive training programme to date.
“We’ve known for a long time that our legacy systems were no longer scalable and fit for purpose. We underinvested in them for many years, to a point where they would hold us back, reduce our efficiency and effectiveness, and create real risk for the business. We had to change,” says Dave Scullin, Chief Digital Officer, Zespri.
“We’ve selected the latest generation SAP applications as our core enterprise platform, but to view this simply as a digital project would be wrong. The Horizon Programme aims for transformational change, supporting a truly integrated end-to-end business.”
In addition to the move to SAP’s cloud offering, Zespri has put in place SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) to offer more efficient end-to-end demand and supply planning capability.
Zespri will also use the SAP Business Technology Platform, including SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), SAP Integration Suite, the SAP Extension Suite, and SAP-endorsed partner offerings from OpenText, Tricentis, and Celonis.
The SAC platform brings together business intelligence, analytics and planning, using best-of-breed data visualisations and dashboarding for analytics and insights.
Fiori applications will generate operational reporting in real-time, right at the moment of transaction capture, allowing Zespri to turn data into intelligence that will assist it in gaining business advantage, making better decisions, enhancing business performance and mitigating risk.
Further, by improving reporting, Zespri will facilitate informed, strategic and timely decision-making.
SAP’s Cloud Success Services collaborated with Deloitte and Accenture to use the SAP Delivery Framework to establish a premium engagements service focused on mitigating the technology risk for the programme, supporting the partner with the initial design, technology safeguarding and go-live support.
“Zespri is one of our most forward-looking customers and its ambitious and proactive way of embracing its business transformation means it is experiencing the benefits of RISE with SAP across its entire business,” says Paul Marriott, Asia Pacific Japan President, SAP.
“We’ve been working with Zespri for many years, and I look forward to the next phase of our journey, as Zespri continues to grow, deliver, and delight customers, while also sustaining returns to the industry and growers.”
The foundations are now firmly in place, and phase one is complete, allowing Zespri to turn its sights to further developments, focusing on increasing enablement and offerings for extended supply chain and quality management, integrated business planning and sales.