Leading Food Company Increases Productivity, Reduces Costs ...



Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Consumer Packaged Goods Manufacturing

Customer Profile

With annual sales over U.S.$3 billion, San Francisco–based Del Monte Foods Company (NYSE:DLM) is one of the country's largest and best-known producers of food and pet products.

Business Situation

After merging with a number of businesses from H. J. Heinz, the new company needed to consolidate its IT infrastructure and provide a standard computing and electronic collaboration environment.

Solution

Del Monte consolidated its IT operations around Microsoft® products and deployed a unified corporate intranet/extranet portal based on Microsoft SharePoint® Products and Technologies.

Benefits

■ Two datacenters eliminated

■ Over U.S.$10,000 IT cost savings per month

■ More secure data access

■ Consistent document management

■ Workflow automation

| | |“SharePoint [Products and Technologies] paid huge dividends and positions us well for the future. We’re very excited about the possibilities.”

Bernard Abel, Director of IT Infrastructure, Information Technology Department, Del Monte Foods

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| | | |With a powerful brand portfolio including Contadina, StarKist, College Inn, 9Lives, and Kibbles 'n |

| | | |Bits, Del Monte Foods products are found in nine out of ten American households. After a large |

| | | |merger, the new company needed to consolidate its IT infrastructure and provide a standardized |

| | | |desktop and electronic communication environment. Ongoing standardization on Microsoft® technologies |

| | | |led Del Monte to choose a Del Monte–branded portal solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® |

| | | |Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services. Solution benefits include substantial |

| | | |IT cost savings due to datacenter consolidation, simplified infrastructure, and a standardized |

| | | |desktop environment; simplified access to information and applications; more secure collaboration and|

| | | |information sharing with external business partners; and time-saving workflow automation. |

| | | | |

| | | |[pic] |

| | | | |

Situation

Headquartered in San Francisco, Del Monte Foods Company (NYSE:DLM) is one of the country's largest producers and distributors of food and pet products. With a powerful portfolio of brands including Contadina, StarKist, College Inn, 9Lives, and Kibbles 'n Bits, Del Monte products are found in nine out of ten American households. Del Monte has a peak employment of 11,300, including a work force of 3,500 full-time personnel and 7,800 seasonal workers. The company generated revenue of U.S.$3.2 billion in fiscal 2005.

Merger Challenges

Late in 2002, Del Monte completed its largest ever business transaction by acquiring seafood, pet food, infant feeding, and private label soup businesses from Pittsburgh-based H. J. Heinz Company. Merging these businesses more than doubled Del Monte’s size and strengthened its preeminence in the consumer and packaged goods industry. The merger posed substantial challenges for Bernard Abel, Director of IT Infrastructure. “We had two disparate IT departments,” comments Abel. “Between them, we had eleven different desktop images, three brands of ‘standard’ workstations, three datacenters, two intranets, and two external web-hosting facilities.”

Lack of standardization threatened to hinder business processes and collaboration among employees and with external partners. Abel, who has a strong business background, was assigned by CIO Marc Brown to consolidate and simplify the IT infrastructure for the new Del Monte. “It was a difficult challenge. The biggest initial goals were reducing costs and increasing productivity and security through consolidation and simplification,” comments Abel.

Rather than relocating former Heinz employees to California, Del Monte decided to expand its Pittsburgh operations. Early in 2006 the company began relocating its former Heinz employees to Del Monte Center—a new, six-story, 270,000-square-foot office building located on Pittsburgh's North Shore. In addition to the product and sales groups associated with Del Monte’s new brands, the company’s IT services and infrastructure groups, comprising about 75 people, are headquartered in the new building.

A Vision for IT

Abel’s vision was to become a valued business partner to the new operating and staff departments through aggressive consolidation combined with technology standardization and excellent customer service. “We regarded ourselves as a mentoring and advisory group, to help our internal customers gain as much value as possible from the solutions we bring,” notes Abel. To help achieve the vision, Abel brought in Jonathan Wynn, an experienced IT infrastructure and solution deployment professional. As Business Lead for Strategic and Capacity Planning, Wynn was responsible for developing a cost-effective core environment in which Del Monte could deploy specific business solutions. “It was very important to build a robust environment rather than to optimize parts of it independently,” notes Wynn.

The team faced the following business challenges:

Cost Reduction

To reduce the cost and complexity of Del Monte’s IT environment, the company needed to eliminate redundant hardware, consolidate services, and enforce corporate IT standards.

Collaboration and Data Sharing

Collaboration and data sharing were primarily done through e-mail messages and attachments. This created information overload and increased the demand on e-mail servers. There were no standardized processes for editing and approval, and documents were difficult to find. Del Monte also needed a more secure process to share intellectual property with sales brokers and other business partners.

Workflow Automation

Del Monte developed a number of internal processes to facilitate transactions among its business units. Most of these processes were paper-driven. For example, capital appropriation for business expansion or new facilities was done via printed documents through interoffice mail. Maintaining an accurate audit trail was time-consuming and routing between regional offices and Headquarters created unwanted delays. With no standard form, business units submitted different versions. Headquarters personnel frequently had to contact the originating business for missing information.

Business Services

Del Monte wanted to consolidate delivery of employee business services including telephone management; identity and password security; computer help and training; video conferencing; benefits information; and employee discount programs.

Data Access

Del Monte’s information workers needed simplified access to a variety of pre-existing corporate databases and analytical tools.

Regulatory Compliance

Del Monte needed more uniform processes for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), an accountability law that mandates strict record keeping and audit trails for financial transactions.

Solution

Soon after the Heinz merger, Del Monte started a process of consolidation and standardization on Microsoft® client and server technologies. The company eliminated two of its three datacenters and deployed a 3-tiered load-balanced Web farm (Figure 1), reducing the number of servers by half. Web sites that were previously hosted externally were brought in-house. A consolidated intranet/extranet with simplified domain structure and site-naming standards replaced the previous Del Monte and Heinz networks.

Legacy desktop environments were replaced with a standard corporate disk image, including Microsoft Windows® XP Professional operating system and Office Professional Edition 2003. On the server side, Del Monte standardized on Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, Exchange Server communication and collaboration server, SQL Server 2000 database platform, and supporting Microsoft technologies, including the Microsoft .NET Framework (the Microsoft Web services development environment).

Portal Enhances Collaboration

To meet the needs for a new collaboration environment, Abel’s team opted for an integrated portal solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services.

Before coming to Del Monte, Jonathan Wynn had favorable experience with SharePoint Team Services, a forerunner of Windows SharePoint Services. “There was a lot of momentum in favor of Microsoft,” notes Wynn. “From my previous work, I knew that SharePoint [Products and] Technologies would be a great way for us to create a corporate portal and customized collaboration environments for our business units.”

With assistance from two Microsoft Services experts, Wynn deployed a corporate employee portal and business portals for key operating and staff groups. The corporate portal home page—the default for all full-time employees—is the gateway for Del Monte workers to receive company news, financial data, and announcements on a daily basis (Figure 2). The portal also provides links to team sites, document libraries, job-specific business processes, employee benefits, and personal data. The portal replaces disparate intranets with a consistent and stable Del Monte–branded environment.

Secure Collaboration and Data Sharing

Del Monte business teams are standardizing on SharePoint team sites for managing projects. Team members benefit from secure access, structured document creation and editing, and the ability to search for project-specific information. The flexibility of team sites enables each group to use them for specific business purposes. Quality control teams now use document libraries to share test results; marketing and sales groups interactively develop new product strategies; and corporate finance teams create documents related to reporting and strategic planning.

Collaboration with Del Monte’s sales brokers has been restructured with a secure extranet portal. More than 400 active broker accounts access the portal on a daily basis. Documents are stored on broker team sites hosted within Del Monte’s secure server farm. Access is authenticated through Active Directory® directory service.

Business Processes

The extranet also provides access to business processes used jointly by Del Monte and its partners. These include CAS CPWerx customer relationship management solution for the consumer goods industry and Del Monte proprietary inventory management software designed to reduce retailers’ overhead costs.

Workflow Automation

With the help of Microsoft Partner SourceCode Technology, Del Monte is taking advantage of its investment in Microsoft SQL Server 2000, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and the Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2003 information-gathering program. Automated electronic workflows developed with SourceCode’s technology simplify paper-driven processes such as the capital appropriations request. All required information is entered into a standard InfoPath form. Once submitted, the request is automatically routed through the approval chain in a secure and paperless process.

Business Services

A number of employee business services are now available through the Del Monte portal. Examples include:

■ Telephone support. A portal site supports Del Monte’s voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephone system.

■ Identity management. Another portal site helps manage network passwords online.

■ Conferencing. Teams use the portal to access Microsoft Office Live Meeting (the Microsoft Office Web conferencing service) or to reserve video conferencing resources.

Consolidated Applications

Abel and Wynn’s vision for the Del Monte desktop included eliminating stand-alone applications, icons, and desktop links to business applications. “We wanted to do everything possible through SharePoint [Portal Server],” says Abel. For example, employees launch a browser-based application through their SharePoint site, and open data files and documents through the Quick Launch bar. The trend toward a leaner desktop is further promoted by tight integration among SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, and Microsoft Office programs.

The portal provides access to existing non-Microsoft information sources. For example, sales data on an Oracle database are retrieved using a custom Web Part. (Web Parts are customizable components for corporate portals that can plug into existing back-end systems to present customized views to a desktop.) The Web Part can present data in different forms, including tables, reports, or 3-dimensional OLAP cubes. (OLAP stands for on-line analytical processing, a mathematically efficient approach to querying a database that is commonly used in business intelligence.)

New applications must meet strict criteria, and employee administration rights—for example, to install new desktop software—are limited. “A new program must fit into our existing environment,” says Abel. “For example, it needs to follow .NET standards, interface with Active Directory using single sign-on, and use Microsoft SQL [Server] as a database.”

Benefits

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services provide Del Monte with a number of benefits:

Cost Reduction

Consolidating datacenters, eliminating external hosting services, and standardizing on Microsoft technologies saves Del Monte tens of thousands of dollars in monthly IT costs. The load on e-mail servers is decreasing as more teams rely on SharePoint sites to manage group activities. “These savings were ‘low-hanging fruit,’” says Abel. “We didn’t need detailed studies to show that Microsoft consolidation was a good business decision.”

A standardized desktop image with limited administrative rights conserves IT resources previously needed to support legacy desktop configurations and applications. More broadly, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services enable Del Monte’s trend away from a “thick client” environment in favor of Web-enabled applications and data access.

Consistent Work Environment

Integrated technologies and a standardized desktop are helping Del Monte’s information workers find the data they need faster and analyze it more accurately. Working from the office or at home, employees experience a standard look and feel across the entire intranet. The consistent login process, intuitive navigation, and search capabilities provided by SharePoint Portal Server provide quick access to all project-related information.

Secure Collaboration and Information Sharing

SharePoint team sites and document libraries provide more secure access, structured document management, and easy integration with Microsoft Office programs. These features increase productivity in Del Monte’s business teams by accelerating document creation, synchronizing team activities, and eliminating duplicated work. Security of sensitive data is enhanced by limiting access and consolidating shared documents on Del Monte’s servers. “The ability to manage teamwork and external data sharing through a secure Web browser was a big benefit for us,” comments Abel.

Workflow Automation and Compliance

Powered by and underlying Microsoft technologies, automated workflows, such as the capital appropriation request, are streamlining business processes. The workflow solution provides more complete data, faster routing and approval, and easier paperless access to the status of any process. Automated workflows generate audit trails that facilitate compliance with corporate standards and SOX regulations. These records are more easily stored and secured than paper documents. Electronic processes are searchable, sharply reducing time required to find a specific request or authorization.

Positioned for the future

Bernard Abel and Jonathan Wynn are confident that standardization on Microsoft technologies will enable Del Monte to meet business needs while saving investor dollars and optimizing IT resources. Abel summarizes the team’s optimism: “SharePoint [Products and Technologies] paid huge dividends and positions us well for the future. We’re very excited about the possibilities.”

Microsoft Office System

Microsoft Office is the business world's chosen environment for information work that provides the software, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to:

‌office

SharePoint Products and Technologies

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables enterprises to deploy an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams and knowledge so that people can use relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently. Windows SharePoint Services allows teams to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration, benefits that help increase individual and team productivity.

For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, go to:

sharepoint

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| |Software and Services

■ Products

− Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

− Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003

− Microsoft Office Live Meeting

− Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

− Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

− Microsoft SQL Server 2000

− Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

− Microsoft Windows XP Professional |Services

− Microsoft Services

■ Technologies

− Microsoft .NET Framework

− Active Directory

− Windows SharePoint Services

− Online Analytical Processing

Hardware

■ 2 HP ProLiant ISA servers

■ 2 HP ProLiant Front end Servers

■ HP DL580 SQL Server

■ HP DL 560 Index/Job Server

■ Nokia Checkpoint Firewall | |

Figure 2. The corporate portal home page—the default for all full-time employees—is the gateway for Del Monte workers to receive company news, financial data, and announcements on a daily basis.

[pic]

“The ability to manage teamwork through a Web browser was a big benefit for us.”

Bernard Abel, Director of IT Infrastructure, Information Technology Department, Del Monte Foods Company

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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Microsoft, Active Directory, InfoPath, the Office logo, SharePoint, Windows, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published April 2006 | | |

For More Information

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For more information about Del Monte Foods products and services, call (415) 247-3000 or visit the Web site at:

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