Denver November 15, 2002 You might think that Land O'Lakes' idea of software would be a pat of the company's signature butter left out of the refrigerator too long.
But with $6 billion in annual sales, the farmer-owned food and agricultural cooperative requires a considerable amount of that other software the computer kind to keep the churns churning.
To that end, Land O'Lakes recently expanded its license agreement with enterprise software provider J.D. Edwards to include enterprise resource planning, supply chain management and customer relationship management.
Headquartered in Arden Hills, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Land O'Lakes tapped J.D. Edwards in July to provide a standardized environment for the company, which now uses a combination of other software solutions.
The food producer, which is owned by and serves more than 7,000 producer-members and approximately 1,300 local community cooperatives, is counting on the move toward a single-supplier solution to increase visibility into the company's internal and external relationships and operations.
This increased visibility should help reduce the total cost of ownership across several different business units, according to Mark Wilberts, vice president of information systems at Land O'Lakes. "When we looked at our current technology solutions and mapped them to our long-term growth plans, we realized that we needed an integrated solution that provided functionality, flexibility, scalability and reliability," Wilberts said.
He said that by standardizing on J.D. Edwards software, the company was looking to create a more stable environment, "which should provide benefits such as reduced costs and increased visibility into our operations."
J.D. Edwards is no stranger in Dairyland. The provider already has several customers in the industry, including Bonlac Foods Grupo Industrial Lala and Marigold Foods.
