Food & Beverage Processing: Hungry For Bottom-Line ResultsFood & Beverage Processing: Hungry For Bottom-Line Results

Business-technology executives in the food and beverage industry are focused on proving the value of IT to the business. They're accomplishing that goal by helping their companies cut costs and develop better relationships with customers and business partners.

Imperial Sugar Co. built an extranet for customers that provides details on products, accounts, and shipping schedules. The company anticipates the extranet will bring big improvements to demand forecasting.

Similarly, Campbell Soup Co. is developing portals that will let customers enter and check the status of orders and view product information. The company is also exploring ways to improve product forecasting for retailers, and it's investigating the potential of using technology to get retailers and consumers more involved in the development of new products. "We're blurring the boundaries between our enterprise and our partners, suppliers, and customers to facilitate better exchange of information," says Joseph Spagnoletti, VP of IT at Campbell Soup.

At McCormick & Co. Inc., salespeople and brokers now have access to a self-service informational Web site, and the spice company has finished replacing its legacy systems with a massive SAP implementation that includes several new customer-focused applications. "We have significantly improved customer service through a more timely understanding of customer requirements," says McCormick's CIO, Jerry Wolfe.

Domino's Pizza LLC has found that point-of-sale systems installed late last year in its pizza outlets have reduced staff-training expenses, a critical factor in a business that suffers high staff turnover.

General Mills Inc., meanwhile, put a high priority on speedy consolidation after its 2001 acquisition of Pillsbury Co. in order to keep costs down. To that end, General Mills moved all of Pillsbury's information to its own SAP systems within just 16 months.

E.&J. Gallo Winery has used contract workers in certain instances--such as PC support and network monitoring--to keep its business-technology budget in line. Says Gallo CIO Kent Kushar, "Outsourcing is key to managing costs and improving performance."

INDUSTRY LEADERS Rank Company Revenue in millions Income (loss)
in millions IT
employees 3 E.&J. Gallo Winery -- -- 238 54 Imperial Sugar Co. $1,298 $16 37 70 Domino's Pizza LLC $1,275 -- 95 98 Campbell Soup Co. $6,133 $525 410 154 Constellation Brands Inc. $2,732 $203 1,450 212 Kraft Foods Inc. $29,723 $6,283 1,500 315 General Mills Inc. $10,506 $917 700 326 Schwan Food Co. $3,500 -- 307 335 McCormick & Co. Inc. $2,320 $180 220 353 Coors Brewing Co. $3,776 $162 160 362 Unified Western Grocers $2,793 -- 146 383 Foremost Farms USA $1,167 $2 45 419 Smithfield Foods Inc. $7,905 $26 350 431 Bunge North America -- -- 96 433 Yum! Brands Inc. $7,757 $583 -- 442 Burger King Corp. -- -- 84 443 Gold Kist Inc. $1,855 -- 58 Financial data is from public sources and company supplied.
Revenue is for latest fiscal year.
Employee data is from information 500 qualifying survey.

SNAPSHOT INSIDE COMPANIES Average portion of revenue spent on IT 1% Average percentage of industry applications and business processes that have Web-based front ends 26% Companies with real-time business processes in place 59% HOW COMPANIES DIVIDE THEIR IT BUDGETS Hardware purchases 15% Services or outsourcing 14% Research and development 3% Salaries and benefits 36% Applications 19% Everything else 13% INDUSTRY FINANCIALS Average year-over-year revenue change -1% Average year-over-year net-income change 128% DATA: information RESEARCH
See year-over-year shifts in business-technology practices for this industry. Compare and contrast this year's data with last year's.

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