Mount Maunganui is a major residential, commercial and industrial suburb in Tauranga, New Zealand. Every year, the suburb hosts several sports events including the Northern Regional Surf Championships, the NZ Under 14 Ocean Athlete Championships, the Pro Volleyball Tour and The Port of Tauranga Half Ironman triathlon.

On February 3, 2018, the 2018 International Cricket Council (ICC) Under 19 Cricket World Cup final was held in Bay Oval, a cricket ground in Mount Maunganui. In December 2020, the cricket ground hosted its first Boxing Day test between New Zealand and Pakistan

Headquartered in Mount Maunganui, Zespri International is the world’s largest marketer of kiwifruit. On January 28, 2020, it announced that it will become one of the first SAP customers globally to utilize the SAP S/4HANA private cloud edition.

The new solution forms a key part of the recently announced RISE with SAP offer that delivers business transformation as a service. This will help Zespri standardize and automate processes across the organization, creating efficiencies and providing a platform for growth and innovation to support the fast-growing company.

The grower-owned marketer has signed a multi-year deal to support its global supply chain process transformation, including a move to SAP S/4HANA, private cloud edition and the implementation of several SAP Digital Supply Chain applications including SAP Global Trade Services, SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and the SAP Logistics Business Network. It will also take advantage of SAP Business Technology Platform capabilities, including SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Integration Suite the SAP Extension Suit, and SAP endorsed partner solutions from OpenText, Tricentis and Celonis.

The technology will underpin Zespri’s ambitious four-year Horizon transformation program to digitize its operations, become more efficient and increase sales. Strong demand for its premium-quality fruit has seen the industry grow strongly, recording global sales of NZD$3.14 billion in 2019 and in 2020 and longer-term, the industry is forecast to increase global supply of kiwifruit from 164.4 million trays in 2019 and in 2020 to around 280 million trays by 2030 .

“Zespri’s Horizon programme will transform the way our company operates, replacing legacy systems and processes that were designed 20 years ago, before the significant growth we’ve experienced in recent years. Our new SAP environment will transform the systems and processes across our business, from finance and supply chain to grower enablement and engagement, sales and business planning,” Zespri chief digital officer Dave Scullin said. “This will strengthen our ability to grow and sustain returns for the industry for decades to come.”

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Global demand for kiwifruit is currently outstripping supply. It is buoyed by the increasing trend of more health-conscious consumers looking for products that taste good and are nutritious.

“Zespri is a large and fast-growing business and we need mature processes and systems to fuel our next stage of growth,” Scullin said. “Adopting SAP’s standardised core platforms will be transformational in itself, while also letting us leverage SAP’s cloud roadmap to adopt innovation at speed.”

Currently, Zespri runs its SAP environment on Microsoft Azure public cloud, which will be migrated to the SAP S/4HANA private cloud edition. The kiwifruit marketer will continue to use Azure for its enterprise infrastructure, bringing the best of Microsoft and SAP.

Zespri’s move to SAP S/4HANA, private cloud edition follows the announcement of SAP’s new concierge service to the Intelligent Enterprise, RISE with SAP, which offers software, infrastructure and technical operations all under one contract. SAP S/4HANA private cloud edition will form a key component of the new Rise with SAP offer.

Designed to deliver business transformation as a service and tailored to each customer’s specific needs, Rise with SAP will include business process redesign, technical migration support, SAP’s Business Technology Platform, the SAP Business Network, SAP S/4HANA Cloud deployment model of choice and Hyperscaler of choice. Scullin said, “Moving to the cloud has been a key strategic decision for us, providing greater flexibility, scalability and faster innovation cycles.”

We know SAP’s private cloud capabilities have matured significantly in recent years, particularly in the form of customer flexibility, service level security and automation, which makes the new SAP S/4HANA private cloud edition best for our business long-term,” Scullin continued. “This will allow us to focus on our process and systems transformation, knowing that our underlying infrastructure and computing platforms are secure, stable, and available. Not only will our transformation help us to reduce business risks by moving to standard systems, it will also enable us to collect and analyse more data, helping us to plan our supply chain more accurately and improve our decision making around shipping and market allocation.”

Phil Cameron currently serves as the managing director of SAP New Zealand. He said, “As a business, we have been clear that our future is in the cloud so it’s fantastic to see a long-time customer like Zespri make the move with us to become an intelligent enterprise.”

“The new SAP S/4HANA private cloud edition will deliver fast time to value, enabling Zespri to seize new business opportunities and respond to changes with speed and agility,” Cameron said. “It will also provide a platform for innovation, utilizing the latest intelligent technologies from the internet of things to predictive analytics.”

“The events of the last year have underlined the importance of resiliency and the ability to rapidly adapt, which are key benefits of moving to the cloud,” Cameron continued. “By moving to SAP S/4HANA PCE, Zespri will also be able to capitalize quickly on emerging technologies that are embedded into platform, to help drive automation, increased profitability, and enable further growth.”

The implementation will be conducted by a consortium of partners, including Deloitte NZ in partnership with ZAG, part of Accenture. The project will be split into several phases with the first Digital Core build phase due to begin in February 2021 focused on finance and supply chain processes before progressing to integrated business planning and sales enablement.