Growing and delivering more almonds
Blue Diamond Growers is cultivating an intelligent, data-driven cooperative thanks to SAP solutions. With software including SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Transportation Management application, and SAP Business Network for Logistics, it has eliminated cumbersome and siloed manual processes to build a risk-resilient supply chain.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Agribusiness | Sacramento, California | 1,500 employees | XpertMinds and project44 |
reduction in supply on hand.
of savings in annual transportation expenses.
customer-order fill rate.
Vice President IT and Services, Blue Diamond Growers
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Agribusiness | Sacramento, California | 1,500 employees | XpertMinds and project44 |
reduction in supply on hand.
of savings in annual transportation expenses.
customer-order fill rate.
Vice President IT and Services, Blue Diamond Growers
Connecting processes to become an automated enterprise
Founded in 1910, Sacramento-based Blue Diamond Growers is the world’s largest almond processing and marketing cooperative. This global enterprise represents approximately 3,000 growers and exports to more than 100 countries. To maximize returns for each of its growers, Blue Diamond needs to not only develop new products but also operate at top efficiency and better understand operational processes. This dedication to strategic innovation was one of the driving factors behind a move to transform its supply chain.
The primary objectives were to transition from disjointed and manual processes for demand, supply, and logistics planning to a digitalized, integrated, and risk-resilient approach. This would provide a single source of truth across the enterprise and multiple ways to increase efficiency.
The organization was managing US$300 million in annual supply chain and logistics expenditure using diverse documents, spreadsheets, and processes. This cumbersome system relied on time-intensive and error-prone manual processes for everything from promotion and scenario planning to securing logistics resources and obtaining order status. As a result, opportunities to run scenarios or simulations were severely limited, and it was challenging for customer service representatives (CSRs) to gain accurate or timely visibility into critical order information. Indeed, it could often take days for a CSR to collect the information needed to respond to a customer.
The COVID-19 pandemic put the many shortcomings of this chaotic environment into the spotlight as the company struggled to deal with rapid and wild fluctuations in supply and demand, alongside limited and unreliable transportation resources. For example, the lead time required for securing freight increased from about three weeks to five months. Similarly, the time needed to plan new promotions more than doubled, increasing from two to five months. These issues, combined with legacy manual processes, severely impacted Blue Diamond’s ability to satisfy demand in a cost-effective and consistent way.
Integrating solutions to digitalize the supply chain
An SAP customer since 2014, Blue Diamond developed a road map aligned to the extended planning and analysis capability to improve insights, resiliency, and responsiveness across lines of business. Moving to SAP S/4HANA laid a solid digital foundation to support business processes and help the cooperative become future ready. Next on the agenda were tackling supply chain and logistics challenges and digitalizing plant operations.
Implementing SAP Signavio solutions enabled Blue Diamond to better understand its processes, identify hidden opportunities, pinpoint issues affecting performance, and get tailored recommendations for improvement. The detailed analysis of business processes identified opportunities in 40 process flows across its lines of business. More than 100 performance indicators signaled opportunities for immediate corrective action. The solutions also identified more than 500 long-term opportunities for process improvement, which the cooperative incorporated in its road map.
Working with partners XpertMinds LLC and project44 LLC, Blue Diamond then implemented the SAP Transportation Management application and SAP Business Network for Logistics, part of the industry cloud portfolio. The team from SAP Business Network collaborated closely with XpertMinds to onboard six carriers for both road and ocean freight. The cooperative also connected project44’s real-time transportation visibility platform with SAP Business Network to maximize value.
Having migrated its ERP to SAP S/4HANA, Blue Diamond also integrated its existing SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions with the suite.
Crafting a collaborative and efficient supply chain
Implementing SAP solutions has enabled a single source of truth for Blue Diamond’s planning and logistics processes. For example, using the SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration solution, it has achieved faster and more dynamic planning, eliminated bottlenecks and shortages, and improved response times in planning and customer support functions.
Thanks to embedded AI capabilities, the new solutions enable a unified plan for demand, supply, manufacturing, and logistics, improving delivery assurance and eliminating shortages. They also support a new level of risk resiliency and enhanced planning capabilities, helping Blue Diamond meet demand, close supply gaps, and respond faster to supply chain risks and potential disruptions. With better insights into demand, supply, and transportation, the cooperative has greatly reduced shortages due to supplier issues and ocean freight risks. Time needed for scenario planning, which needs to be completed to confirm resources, has fallen from six hours to 20 minutes. Implementing SAP solutions and project44’s platform has also increased efficiency by consolidating systems and eliminating manual tasks, enabling employees to take on more-strategic responsibilities.
Meanwhile, integrating SAP Transportation Management and SAP Business Network for Logistics has helped Blue Diamond optimize internal transportation processes while increasing overall supply chain visibility and strengthening collaboration across supplier, customer, and carrier partners.
And combining logistics collaboration on SAP Business Network with project44’s platform has also enabled Blue Diamond to create an intelligent, data-driven cooperative that provides significant value for member growers.
In addition to reduced supply on hand, lower transportation expenses, and vastly improved fill rates for customer orders, Blue Diamond has achieved a 10% improvement in forecast accuracy. It has also eliminated tedious manual processes and shifted to weekly and daily demand and supply planning.
Continuing the digitalization journey
Blue Diamond is now building on its digitalized supply chain to reap further benefits from SAP solutions. In one planned initiative, it intends to leverage new generative AI capabilities in SAP Transportation Management to automatically process tens of thousands of delivery notes received daily.
Steve Birgfeld, the cooperative’s vice president for IT and services, sums up Blue Diamond’s plans as follows: “We are just at the starting point to better understand where we have further process insights and automation opportunities. We’ll continue to enable those insights and incorporate them. We have just completed our journey to a fully digitalized supply chain. Our road map will focus on additional manufacturing capabilities over the next couple of years, and we especially see the potential to leverage the integration and automation solutions in that space.”
Want to know more about Blue Diamond Growers?
- Improving Operations to Support More Than 3,000 Cooperative Members, SAP Online Customer Story
Featured partners
XpertMinds provides value in diverse industries across the suite of SAP solutions by pairing its deep technical skill with an ability to diagnose key goals and improve processes. Its analysts are SAP software experts with years of experience as SAP solutions support analysts and business users. They are creative troubleshooters with strong communication skills and deep knowledge of the business areas they support.
With team members across the United States and around the world, project44 helps solve the technology issues that impact the global supply chain. Its Advanced Visibility Platform for shippers and logistics service providers helps create a foundation for intelligent and data-driven cooperation that provides maximum business value and enables a digitalized and risk-resilient supply chain.