1. Since 1894, The Hershey Company has been an iconic snacks company.
For great snacks in a digital age, Hershey employees use Microsoft
Office 365 productivity tools to transform enterprise connectivity
and brainstorm the latest ways to satisfy consumer needs across the
globe. And beginning with a single Twizzlers factory line, Hershey has
introduced an Internet of Things (IoT) scenario, using Microsoft Azure
Machine Learning to optimize factory lines and streamline production.
“The future for Hershey is very exciting—with
Microsoft cloud solutions, we are in control of
our digital journey, connecting everyone to
work better together and share our goodness.”
—Carlos Amesquita, Chief Information Officer, The Hershey Company
Hershey enhances global brands
and productivity with cloud technology
The Hershey Company
www.thehersheycompany.com
22,000 employees
United States
Manufacturing—Retail and consumer goods
Company profile
The Hershey Company, based in Hershey,
Pennsylvania, brings goodness to the world
through its chocolate and snacks. The
confectionery leader’s 80 brands generate
US$7.4 billion in annual revenues.

2.
Processing delicious ingredients into luscious, flavorful Hershey
chocolate, a conche machine beats like a heart of goodness in
every one of the company’s chocolate factories. Founded on the
principles of sharing happiness, Hershey was the first American
company to mass produce chocolate, introducing its iconic
Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar in 1894. Today, at 80 brands, Hershey
satisfies taste buds and spreads goodness all over the world. That’s
because the company understands how to turn unmet consumer
demand into a wonderful consumer experience.
Understanding the customer is even more important as the company builds its brands
in a digital world. “The industry is changing rapidly, so we have to stay on top of market
demands,” says Mike Wetzel, Manager, Business Transformation, Corporate Systems at
The Hershey Company, who often craves Krave jerky (Hershey acquired the artisanal
jerky company in 2015). “We need new technologies to collaborate on how we can
better satisfy the consumer as their tastes evolve.”
Digital transformation changes the Hershey workstyle
Until recently, Hershey’s work environments were defined by geography and office
walls. Intellectual capital might remain sealed inside different departments. Hershey IT
staffers spent too much time administering business productivity systems that didn’t
provide the modern, connected workplace that Hershey employees needed to compete
in a global, Internet-enabled marketplace.
“Hershey wanted to offer employees a more spontaneous, connected, and
collaborative work environment,” says Wetzel. “We use Microsoft Office 365 to free
people from their devices so that they can be productive when and where and how
they want, easily accessing colleagues and data to get their work done. We thought
carefully about the security of a cloud-based business productivity platform and were
satisfied that with Microsoft our intellectual property would be safe. At the end of the
day, Office 365 is the language of business.”
“We consider Office 365 a fundamental pillar in our transformation toward enterprise
connectivity, where mobility is inserted into everything we do,” adds Carlos Amesquita,
Chief Information Officer and a devotee of Hershey’s Kit Kat Dark. “We’re connecting
people to people, people to information, and people to systems, and we’re improving
the quality and speed of decision making.”
Predictive analytics help optimize operations
With the successful launch of Office 365, Hershey decided to adopt the Microsoft Azure
cloud computing platform and use Azure Machine Learning within the Cortana
Intelligence Suite and Microsoft Power BI to generate actionable information on
demand. “Hershey is well known for having great insight into the customer, but
with Azure Machine Learning, we’ll take insight to a higher level in all aspects of
our business,” says George Lenhart, Senior Manager, Advanced Productivity and
Collaboration, whose favorite treat is Twizzlers Sweet & Sour Filled Twists. “Better
“Hershey is well known for
having great insight into
the customer, but with
Azure Machine Learning,
we’ll take insight to a
higher level in all aspects
of our business.”
—George Lenhart,
Senior Manager,
Advanced Productivity
and Collaboration,
The Hershey Company

3. analytics, better manufacturing, better customer insights—they all lead to a better
customer experience.”
Initially, Hershey will take advantage of Azure Machine Learning to optimize licorice
production using intelligent sensors on factory line extruders. This Internet of Things
(IoT) solution uploads data to the cloud to build predictive algorithms that ensure the
extruders run at optimal efficiency. “We’ll use Power BI to stream temperature, torque,
and pressure data to a dashboard so we can monitor extruder performance in real
time,” says Lenhart. “We anticipate saving half a million dollars just by optimizing this
one element on the line. As we introduce Azure Machine Learning in other plants where
we use more expensive ingredients, we’ll save even more money. From there, we’ll apply
it to packaging, transportation, customer behavior—anywhere we can collect data is
now an opportunity to improve real-time insight into our business.”
Combining the ingredients to empower employees
The company’s new intranet site—dubbed “The Conche” and based on Microsoft
SharePoint Online—is the hub for connecting and collaborating across the company.
“Just like the conche machine used to mix all the ingredients together to make
chocolate, our intranet is the place where you have all the ingredients you need to do
your job,” says Leanna Meiser, Senior Manager, Marketing Training and Capabilities and
fan of Hershey’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
BrightStarr, a Hershey partner and member of the Microsoft Partner Network,
implemented its Unily productivity platform on top of Office 365. “BrightStarr was
unique in its ability to turn our vision for an intranet into reality,” says Wetzel. “Today,
everyone benefits from using a searchable, multilingual, and user-friendly intranet
that’s available on any device. Plus, we are streamlining operations because Office 365
afforded us the ability to move fully into the cloud, reducing maintenance and
infrastructure costs.”
Hershey created self-directed SharePoint Online teams that work with IT staffers to
build workflows on The Conche that save the company time and money. One team
created two collaboration sites and a workflow to streamline audits, reducing internal
audit time and trimming 1,250 hours out of the audit management process annually.
Another team improved collaboration with one of the company’s leading suppliers of
cocoa, Barry Callebaut, by giving the supplier access to a highly secure portal on The
Conche. Hershey and Barry Callebaut employees use Office 365 to share files on joint
projects and coauthor documents, saving the Barry Callebaut team at Hershey 70 hours
a week.
“Employees feel more empowered if you give them the capabilities to manage their
own work,” says Amesquita. “So it’s a real win for us when employees use Office 365
services to generate solutions with business value, such as enriching important
relationships with retailers that sell our products and our global partners.”
Creative collaboration builds expert marketers
According to Meiser, the introduction of Office 365 “was like a breath of fresh air”
for the company’s marketing managers. “Now when someone has that electrifying
insight that feeds a creative brief—our starting point for all compelling customer
engagement—they use Office 365 to streamline the process of getting the right
product to the right market at the right time,” she says. “With easy access to the latest
version of the creative brief on our intranet, we can expedite the development of that
new product’s package design or 50-second TV spot.”
“Employees feel more
empowered if you give
them the capabilities to
manage their own work.
So it’s a real win for us
when employees use
Office 365 services to
generate solutions with
business value.”
—Carlos Amesquita,
Chief Information Officer,
The Hershey Company

4. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published September 2016
Marketers collaborate in real time with Hershey agencies by uploading and sharing
videos, storyboards, creative briefs, and media plans using Microsoft OneDrive for
Business. Relying on Skype for Business Online to maintain a human-to-human element
in the collaborative process, marketers connect and drive creative dialogue. “I’m in
a factory across the country with the brand production team, and we sit around the
screen and chat with the brand marketing team in the Hershey, Pennsylvania head
office,” says Meiser. “Suddenly time zones and geography disappear—it’s just a meeting
of the minds to spark the creative process.”
And for a customer-centric, brand-building company, it is critical that marketers keep
the retail experience at the forefront of all their decisions. “The Yammer enterprise
social network has been a gold mine for our marketers to tap into and see how
customers behave at the point of sale,” says Meiser. “Now we have a direct line of
insight into the customer experience where that crucial moment of buying choices
happens, and we can create ways to engage more people at the point of sale.”
In her role as Senior Manager, Marketing Training and Capabilities at Hershey, Meiser
uses Office 365 tools to develop world-class marketers who nurture the company’s
brands. With the Hershey learning management system front and center on The
Conche, Hershey has seen a significant uptick in views of its eLearning modules. “With
immediate access to the learning interface, new marketers get up to speed faster with
our brand-building framework, media plans, and creative briefs,” says Meiser. “And if
they want to chat with the person who wrote the creative brief for Kit Kat, for example,
that person is one click away from a Skype for Business Online audio or video call.”
According to Amesquita, the company’s digital transformation is a necessary
journey to stay relevant in today’s market, and Microsoft cloud technology is an
essential ingredient. “Digital transformation is not an end, it’s a means for continual
improvement,” says Amesquita. “We use Azure cloud analytics to gather operational
and customer insights, and we use Office 365 to share that information to drive
business value. The future for Hershey is very exciting—with Microsoft cloud solutions,
we are in control of our digital journey, connecting everyone to work better together
and share the goodness.”
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Software and services
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft OneDrive for Business
Microsoft SharePoint Online
Skype for Business Online
Yammer
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure Machine Learning
Microsoft Power BI