Food industry leader seeks strategic innovation

 Pizza is an American culinary staple, and quality mozzarella cheese is the key ingredient. This single 65-year-old manufacturer of dairy and whey products makes the vast majority of cheese used by U.S. pizza chains.

The company’s cheese and sweet whey products are produced at 11 manufacturing plants throughout the country. In an industry where innovation is driving competition, the company needed to streamline its world-class product R&D process. With more than 50 patents for cheese and dairy ingredient technology, the company relies on its pilot plant, QA lab and test kitchens to develop new products for market.

Desiring an updated strategic approach to new product innovation to drive revenue growth, the company needed process improvement, transparency and simplified gate reviews. This required a single platform for product management and information.

After selecting Accolade in 2017, the company built a collaborative relationship with the Sopheon team in order for Sopheon to better understand the company’s specific needs and processes.

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The needs

  • The ability to manage all projects within the company’s quality, R&D and IT divisions using a single solution
  • Project management tools that can address increased project complexity and communicate project needs simply and effectively
  • Portfolio management tools that can assess the business landscape, including geography, product mix, and market channel data

The challenges

  • Limited management insight into project portfolio health and new product status
  • Bringing a manual gate process from paper to a digital solution
  • No holistic, trusted source of new product insight in a competitive global industry
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How Sopheon helped

When Sopheon began to work with this seasoned industry leader, R&D personnel and C-suite leadership had limited visibility to projects. Accolade helped the company track new product development, share status across functions and improve project completion and success.

The company’s paper-based processes, which involved multiple handoffs and relied on a few key individuals, were soon replaced by Accolade. The ability to manage increasingly varied sets of portfolios translated into real business value for the company. The configurability of Accolade and its ability to enable consistent cross-functional communication will continue paying dividends for the company.

Working together with the company, Sopheon helped design and implement:

  • A streamlined portfolio review, gate review and new product development process
  • A “single source of truth” for communicating new product and project data
  • A simple, easy-to-manage solution for collaborative new product development between the company’s business units

What our experts say

Greg Cottichia - Sopheon
"We’re happy we were able to help this industry leader achieve their goals."
Greg Coticchia

Former CEO, Sopheon

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