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Orlando, Florida – marzetti According to , after a large-scale ERP overhaul over several years, the company turned its attention to expanding AI adoption. CIO Liam Durbin. Although the previous project was difficult, Ohio-based food company We are moving in the right direction toward further modernization and innovation.
“We are completely focused on AI.” Durbin spoke to CIO Dive. “We have all the data ready to go. We’re building use cases. We started with just one project… and built three or four good, healthy queues right behind it.”
During an ERP project, technical experts have little time to focus on anything else. IT organizations are now becoming more comfortable using AI as part of their own workflows and deploying the technology to other parts of the organization, such as finance and HR.
Despite the feeling that There is an urgent need to adopt AI What most technology leaders have felt over the past few years is marzetti I didn’t rush into it without laying the foundation first. And everyone in the organization gets better results from it. Durbin.
“AI cannot be done in a fragmented and fragmented data environment.” Durbin said. “We’re very fortunate that the work is being done. When we say we’re going to do an AI project, we can actually do it.”
This year, the salad dressing manufacturer worked to strengthen its AI capabilities across the organization in preparation for launching more projects. In addition to deploying an acceptable use policy; Durbin We started sending out messages of the week to our employees.
Rapid practices typically focus on business-related ideas and sometimes involve involvement in outside hobbies or events. Durbin Lessons learned are included to help your employees feel comfortable using it. How to best interact with large language models. A notification appears with each message asking you to check the Acceptable Use Policy.
“I got a lot of good feedback from people, and people got involved.” Durbin said.
After the company formed an AI council and identified AI champions, executives stopped weekly training. Durbin He said he doesn’t want to burden his employees, but will send out impromptu classes from time to time as a refresher.
marzetti We plan to roll out ChatGPT to all knowledge workers over the next six months. He saw generative AI assistants as essential business tools like Microsoft 365 and wanted to provide secure access to them. Once activated, the tool is complemented by guardrails created by Marzetti.
“We are healthy.” Durbin said. “We’re not trying to impress anyone. We’re just moving forward at a good pace and our internal stakeholders and board are happy.”
Lessons learned from ERP inspection
Before pursuing AI, the company first had to deal with migrating its complex ERP to SAP S/4HANA.
ERP updates are notoriously difficult. Gartner predicts more. 70% of ERP Initiatives Will Fail Fully meet initial expectations by 2027by 1/4 ended tragically. The company decline in sales and operational issues Due to ERP overhaul Slow deployment approach Alleviating challenges.
“Anyone who says they’ve done much other than ERP is probably exaggerating.” Durbin This is what he said in a presentation to companies undergoing updates at Gartner’s IT Symposium/Xpo. “It really sucks all the oxygen out of the room and all the spending goes to the project.”
Despite the difficulties ahead, MajetteWe were lucky in a few areas early on, including buy-in from both decision makers and employees. Durbin Added.
“We were using aging applications, so when it came time to do an ERP transition, not many people said, ‘No, please, I don’t want to go.’” Durbin said. The legacy application was highly customized and was internally referred to as the “recession platform.”
The alignment of top management, board of directors, and employees has created a tailwind to move the company forward quickly.
“We had a ‘no excuses’ project.” Durbin said. “You had to ask for everything you wanted, and we got almost everything we asked for.”
However, the company faced some challenges. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the migration project took longer than originally expected. We also had to adjust schedules for the new system, including planning for production downtime.
“We haven’t talked about how this will work in a cloud environment yet.” Durbin said.
Other issues also arose, including a lack of clarity about the role the operational change management team would play following the project. The IT department also experienced internal fatigue due to extended projects and a growing backlog of requests.
“We tried to process what we could, but the reinforcement queue was bulging at the seams.” Durbin said. “So there was a lot of noise even after a very successful project.”
The enthusiasm to break away from existing platforms has led to some short-sighted thinking. But fortunately for Marzetti, “the short-term needs bridged the gap with the long-term needs,” Durbin said. He advised CIO colleagues to talk first, establish an overall roadmap, and secure buy-in early.
Durbin Ultimately, with the support of the CEO and CFO, we aligned the change management team into a Center of Excellence. With his C-level colleagues, Durbin We could also set up monthly meetings to prioritize the backlog.
“The COE is now a business-related product organization that reports to me.” Durbin said. “It’s a bit of a change from the typical CIO role, but it’s a good one. Now you can own every part of meeting the business needs, from the voice of the customer to technology implementation.”
