In 2020, kiwifruit industry leader Zespri embarked on what it called Project Horizon, an effort to transform its digital processes and systems – some of which, said Richard Matthews, business process analyst and Celonis Centre of Excellence lead for Zespri, were 20 years old.

“In particular, we wanted to drive better outcomes for our people and our customers while also helping to drive more value for our growers,” Matthews said. 

“To do that, we saw opportunities to improve our procurement and purchase-to-pay systems.”

It was a huge project, and Zespri, which expects to export a record 190 million trays of fruit throughout 2024 to over 55 countries, knew they had to find just the right partner to help them accomplish it, he added. Despite working with over 4,300 growers and accounting for roughly 33% of global kiwi volume, Zespri’s outdated systems were resulting in inefficiencies throughout the global supply chain.

The company chose Celonis, which is widely recognized as the global leader in process mining and process intelligence. It turned out to be a good choice.

“Throughout our time working with Celonis, they’ve demonstrated their ability to meet and exceed the goals that we’ve outlined,” Matthews said. “And they were able to help deliver insights into our processes at the onset of our partnership, which accelerated our digital transformation journey.”

Celonis, he added, excels at providing detailed insights into processes – and doing it quickly.

Their technology also complements existing tech stacks, so there isn’t a need to replace existing solutions.

“That makes integration much, much smoother,” Matthews said.

And as a pioneer in process mining and process intelligence, Celonis has a wealth of experience that Zespri has been able to benefit from.

Efficiency gains 

In particular, Celonis, which has worked with roughly 50% of the top 200 of the Forbes Global 2000, has helped Zespri gain detailed insight into its processes, which have enabled Zespri to ensure that it’s deploying its resources in the most efficient way possible.

With Celonis’ help, Matthews said, Zespri has delivered millions in value. The company has been able to reduce slow payments, and it saw significant increases in purchase order conformance, which has helped reduce unnecessary manual labor and payment times.

Zespri’s teams now also have proactive ways to increase PO performance, and Celonis’s Credit Memo App improved credit memo clearance in less than three months. That helps Zespri free working capital and avoid unnecessary write-offs.

Zespri has also been able to proactively detect duplicate spend, which prevented unnecessary payments.

The world is currently experiencing cost pressures at all supply chain touch points, Matthews said. Grocery retailers are among those feeling the pinch.

“We want to ensure that Zespri is playing our role within the supply chain of ensuring that we are being efficient as possible through well organized and optimized processes. By using Celonis, Zespri now has the ability to develop a digital twin view of our end to end processes, which provides us vital insights of our process efficiency that we did not previously have.”

That level of visibility ensures the process of providing fresh and healthy kiwifruit to Zespri’s consumers is carried out while utilizing its resources in the most effective and efficient manner.

“Internally, we talk about the importance of value generation, and this is where Celonis helps us identify and enables us to generate value in both quantitative and qualitative forms,” Matthews said. “It’s this value generation of our processes that will ultimately support continued sustainable returns to our growers, and consumers having confidence they are always buying the same great-tasting high-quality Zespri Kiwifruit they know and love.”

Zespri looks forward to further growing Celonis’s adoption across the company, he added.

This article is an excerpt from the November 2024 issue of Supermarket Perimeter. You can read the entire Process Mining feature and more in the digital edition here.