A look at the digital strategy for Olam International

Olam International is a global $23.7 billion food and agri-business providing food, seeds, feed and fiber to more than 25,000 customers worldwide, including Cocoa, Chocolate, Edible Nuts, Spices, Meat, Wheat, Animal Feeds, Cotton, Edible Oils, Rice, Packaged Foods and Infrastructure and Logistics. Business companies also provide Commodity Financial Services, Risk Management, and Sustainability Services. Olam's value chain extends over 60 countries, supplying more than 180 production facilities and 14 innovation centers worldwide from an estimated five million growers.

The company launched business intelligence programs simultaneously to help the management & operations team make smarter decisions, backed by data warehousing. In addition, the IT department linked the entire company through various communication channels for better collaboration.

Olam developed an in-house commodity trading and risk management (CTRM) platform for its trading and risk management operations which was integrated with SAP's ERP. "Trading and risk management is one of the cornerstones of Olam 's enterprises. As there's no comprehensive CTRM framework that could suit Olam 's diversified business needs, Olam’s developed a ground-up solution, leveraging the new digital technologies and resources like Microservices, Cloud Native, etc.

The firm also leverages various SAP extension modules and bolt-on tools from third parties. For instance for indirect procurement optimization Olam is implementing SAP Ariba, Concur for cost control, SuccessFactors for HR automation, SAP EHS, Oracle transport optimization system, etc. to name a few. Olam is also actively active in the process of developing CRM software for Salesforce.

“Strategically, Olam’s have built a collection of core technology foundation focused on the ERP and CTRM technologies, along with Analytics with a broad underlying portfolio of collaboration and infrastructure. Olam’s also have bolt-on solutions that work with the core backbone to build an end-to - end built-in ecosystem that enhances the company, "Mani averred.

Agricentral is the farmer services network that helps farmers make important decisions about growing their yield and productivity in their farming businesses. This has been implemented to exploit emerging technologies such as Mobile Device, GPS, Satellite Imagery, Machine Learning, Big Data and Image Analytics for Indian farmers. OFIS is a digital tool that the firm has established globally to capture and apply data at the farm level. Olam may map individual farms, social networks, collect GPS data points, and manage the "first-mile" transactions to provide tailored and better farm management plans with OFIS. Olam Direct is a technology platform for farmers to deal directly with Olam, bypassing the intermediaries through which farmers are given higher margins for their products.

One of the major challenges facing the agri-industry, Mani said, is maintaining product quality and handling inventory positions effectively. Hence Olam International digitizes its warehouses. "Digitizing the warehouses allows an up-to - date tracking of the place to track the mark to our market value. Mani added we are digitizing entire warehouses across the globe, we are also investing in smart factory initiatives where we leverage IoT, advanced Big Data Analytics and machine learning techniques to build digitized factories where we can do energy saving, predictive maintenance and automate the store floor. Olam’s is also engaged in digital farming, using drones, image analytics and IoT to operate farms. In addition , the company is building out its e-commerce platforms to create a customized, omni-channel experience for its customers.

Accelerating growth during pandemic

According to Mani, as a multinational organization with operations in more than 60 countries, it is likely that Olam will also face some disruptions due to lockdowns within its supply chains. Olam is therefore well placed to handle the effects of the pandemic due to our global reach, end-to - end operation, supply chain management and being an integral commodity service provider.

“In the past, Olam’s digital strategies have also helped us and encouraged the employees to start WFH from the very next day. In addition, they continue to follow their strategic goals as expected, while concentrating on protecting people. Olam’s also note improved efficiency during this time in the provision of technology services to their companies. In addition, Olam’s described 11 emerging innovations that could accelerate in the post-pandemic period due to their effect on social, economic , and technological scenarios. Olam has begun work on these innovations to exploit new markets and address the post-pandemic challenges.

Cloud Strategy

Talking of cloud computing, Mani said he had little interest in using the public cloud until around 2016. "I felt there was no compelling need and use of case to migrate to the enterprise-wide public cloud for automation. But as soon as our end-to - end digital strategy took shape, I became clear that public cloud is the way to go as we set out to push beyond the limits of Olam business activity to communicate with millions of farmers and thousands of customers, "Mani said. As a result, Olam’s developed the Public Cloud strategy, with the goal of making all digital platforms cloud native. However, Olam 's central enterprise IT systems remain running on a private cloud. "Today, with Nutanix HCI technology, Olam’s are absolutely in a hyper-convergence architecture, they also have a full Nutanix DR system, and built a very simple hybrid cloud strategy. Hybrid cloud is the way forward and that approach is here to stay. Olam has also invested in providing its workers with VDI on the Nutanix HCI platform with a successful and safe digital workplace.

“Olam’s will continue to leverage cloud smart strategy and look to transfer related business system components to cloud as and when feasible and beneficial, "Mani concludes. According to Mani, "Digital provides the best opportunity not only to change our own business operations but also to conquer the entire business environment beyond that. At Olam, therefore, we envisaged an end-to-end expanded digital enterprise strategy starting from our farmers to our consumers, while also digitizing everything in between.”