Pigs are, well, pigs when it comes to their appetites.
No company knows this better than Christensen Farms, the United States third-largest pork producer. Based in the small Minnesota town of Sleepy Eye, Christensen buys over 35 million tons of corn annually to raise some three million hogs.
Time for a fresh approach
The corn is procured and processed at feed mills in four Midwestern states. Until recently, each mill managed its own corn contracts and procurement processes separately with different and sometimes unreliable Access-based systems, making centralized reporting a labor-intensive and error-prone process. And when corn prices began a roller coaster ride—gyrating from $1.5 to over $8 a bushel—it became a serious issue.
When the company decided to open a new mill, it knew it needed a fresh approach for managing corn contracts: one standardized procurement application for all mills, and a centralized and automated mechanism for collecting and reporting data. However, Amy Junge, the company’s IT manager, knew this challenge would greatly outstrip the bandwidth of the two developers on her eight-person IT staff.
She found the answer 200 miles away with Coherent Solutions, a technology solutions and outsourcing company with offices and highly experienced teams in both the U.S. and Eastern Europe. The company’s high-touch relationship approach includes consultants with business analysis, solution architecture, and project management consultants linked closely to high-quality offshore development resources, with minimal communication problems or instability associated with other offshore development firms.
Coherent provides broad capabilities and knowledgeable resources
Given Junge’s past experiences, that’s exactly what she needed. “I’ve worked with offshore companies before,” Junge says, “but most of them focus mainly on software development. “
