ConAgra Foods is a leading premium foods company and a trusted name behind many house hold names, including: Healthy Choice, Chef Boyardee, Egg Beaters, Hebrew National, Hunt’s, Orville Redenbacher’s, PAM, and Banquet, among others. Their consumer brands are found in 98% of households and 26 are ranked first or second in their category. ConAgra Foods also has a very significant presence in commercial food products and is one of the nation’s leading specialty potato providers to restaurants and other foodservice establishments.

Case Study:The management of hundreds of brands and hundreds of facilities throughout North America had lead ConAgra Foods to redevelop their IT strategy. Most facilities operated on separate platforms and ERP instances. Because each instance was managed independently there were dozens of release levels, extensive modifications and a host of different ERP systems. As part of the ConAgra Foods underlying strategy BIA was retained to help with three major initiatives.

Stabilize the existing environment and implement management processes and procedures to support ongoing business requirements.Standardize and consolidate manufacturing systems in a single instance.Interface manufacturing and supply chain with head office financial systems

Additionally, other significant applications developed and managed by BIA were the enterprise data warehouse, promotions and deals data-mart, consumer complaints system, EDI functions, financial reporting and KPIs. Applications: BPCS Oracle SAP LegacySystems: HP Cisco Unix AS/400Languages: Oracle VB RPG Cognos Cobol JavaDatabases: DB2 SQL Oracle

ConAgra Food’s vision statement reads "One company growing by nourishing lives and finding a better way today … one bite at a time." The company is dedicated to providing customers and consumers with food they can count on to taste great and provide good nutrition at a fair value.

The very real significance of this statement is that quality, reliability and food safety is of paramount importance. By transforming the organization in the manner described in this case study and utilizing BIA as an important partner, ConAgra has taken significant strides in ensuring their product safety and long term success.

Functions such as lot tracking, logistics management and quality control are now managed across the entire organization rather than on a plant by plant basis. This has allowed better management of supply chain costs, efficiencies and common synergy that would have been impossible before. Further more, these savings allows ConAgra Foods to better penetrate the market while at the same time improve on their bottom line. Just a one percent savings in their operating costs adds five percent directly to the bottom line. New green initiatives, package reductions, strategic logistics, best shore IT practices and a continual drive to excellence will help maintain the competitive advantage ConAgra Foods has enjoyed for over 100 years.

Any business that’s been around for 150 years knows how to be successful. The secret is effectively utilizing your best available resources and BIA has played an important role in moving the business in the right direction.

ConAgra continues to develop new products and strategies that keep it at the forefront of the consumers table.

“Foresight, value, leadership – It’s what your IT vendor should bring.”Mark Foster, CIO