Festival Foods chose BP Logix Process Director as the BPM solution that could automate inventory reconciliation workflows and could standardize across different types of processes. The emphasis was to deploy a ready-to-go solution so that IT could continue to work on longer-term projects.

1. CUSTOMER PROFILEwww.bplogix.com
FESTIVAL FOODS AUTOMATES
KEY PROCESSES AS PART OF THE
COMPANY’S GROWTH INITIATIVE
Festival Foods is more than a grocery store. As an employee- and family-owned
company, the organization prides itself on providing high-quality products
and offering its ‘guests’ an exceptional shopping experience that includes
value-driven pricing, a wide selection of products, healthy choices and a great
shopping experience.
Founded in 1946 as a Skogen’s IGA, the company began operating as Festival
Foods in 1990. Currently employing nearly 7,000 full- and part-time associates,
Festival Foods operates 25 Festival Foods
supermarkets, as well as Lakeside Foods
in Paddock Lake, Wisconsin.
As an organization dedicated to making a
positive impact in the communities it serves,
Festival is committed to environmental
sustainability. The company has taken
a variety of steps to reduce its carbon
footprint by investing in new, energy
efficient technology, shopping for locally
grown produce, and recycling and repurposing
local trees for a new store.
A culture-driven company, Festival is committed to building relationships with
guests and associates, providing excellent service and investing in its associates.
Mike Nomland
Director of Information Technology
What was
unique was that
the process we
went through
with BP Logix
wasn’t a sales
call – it was a
discovery call.
We were shown
value before
we bought the
product.

2. www.bplogix.com
A NEED TO AUTOMATE
Mike Nomland is the IT Director for Festival; he and
his team are responsible for development, client
services, systems administration, network engineering,
project management and the company’s Help Desk,
as they support the technology needs of the growing
chain. While Festival has long enjoyed a reputation for
outstanding customer service, its largely manual back-
office processes were vulnerable to human error.
One of those core processes involved the receiving
and inventorying of groceries. At every store,
employees known as “receivers” take physical delivery
of the groceries, then scan in the accompanying
invoices. As with any manual process, mistakes can
occur that require information to be subsequently
corrected. Festival’s leadership believed that
automating that specific process would eliminate
errors, while also enabling the process to scale. This
was particularly important as Festival was planning to
expand the number of stores in its portfolio.
The system selected initially involved an OCR solution
that would read the invoices. It turned out, however,
that the system chosen was ineffective, lacked
accuracy and was unable to scale. According to
Nomland, “We found that we could only achieve about
60% accuracy, as every vendor had its own template
and we have thousands of vendors,” he said.
A NEXT GENERATION SOLUTION
Acknowledging that the company was on an expansive
growth path, and striving to avoid the rework involved
in matching the costs on invoices to items received,
Nomland made a recommendation. “I thought this
situation represented an opportunity. I had been
told we would have to add two-three headcount to
each new store we planned to open. I believed that
by implementing a BPM solution we could eliminate
having to add that headcount, yet could achieve the
same or better efficiency,” he remarked.
We do not have nor need
a huge IT department.
Process Director can be
the operations console for
the company.

3. www.bplogix.com
Seeking to ensure consistent results, Nomland
identified the need for a next generation solution. It
needed to be: 1) Automated, 2) Scalable, 3) Efficient
and 4) Able to be standardized across all stores.
“Rather than build a solution in-house, we wanted to
automate the workflow and standardize our process.
In that way IT could
continue to work on
longer-term projects,”
said Nomland.
Festival then began a
four month review of
available solutions, with
the goals of automation,
consistency and
accuracy. Nomland’s team
evaluated the investments
they had already
purchased in house,
including SharePoint.
They then explored other BPM type of tools and more
inclusive ERP solutions. “We decided we didn’t want
to go down that road. We knew we were opening
stores and that it would be ideal to avoid having to hire
additional people for that process,” he commented.
Nomland determined that what was needed were
core sets of technology within IT that could be re-
used – not a one-off for everything they were being
asked to do. After demos and a deep dive, his team
selected BP Logix Process Director. According to
Nomland, “What was unique was that the process
we went through with BP Logix wasn’t a sales call – it
was a discovery call. We heard ‘Yes we can do this’
a number of times. We were shown value before we
bought the product.”
CONSISTENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Festival began to address its most pressing needs,
beginning with inventory and purchase order
reconciliation (to be followed by procurement and
onboarding). IT was able to easily import product
information, sales data, transactional information,
store locations and vendor information into the new
system.
After rolling out the
company’s first process
with excellent results,
Nomland began looking
ahead to other processes.
There are currently 10-15
processes in that queue
including IT onboarding
tasks, procurement and
contract management. He
happily reports that there
have been only glowing
reviews. Senior leadership
has acknowledged that the
company is saving more
money than anticipated and not having to hire receiver
positions for new stores.
The top three business issues that Process Director
has addressed for Festival are: 1) Efficiency,
2) Accuracy and 3) Scalability. “As a company,
efficiency is very important to us. As a result, we do
not have nor need a huge IT department. Process
Director can be the operations console for the
company, with the more routine tasks automatically
being addressed by the product. In that way IT will
have more time to focus on more visionary projects,”
Nomland remarked.
EXECUTING ON THE VISION
Process Director has met and in some cases already
exceeded expectations; the company has grown from
19 to 25 stores in less than 18 months. Anything IT
identifies that is process-driven will now be deployed
using Process Director as a core component.

4. www.bplogix.com
Festival also operates an IT steering committee
that meets monthly to discuss new projects. The
committee looks at the effort and the impact of the
requests it receives. Nomland said, “Our goal is to
automate low-effort, high-impact tasks whenever it
makes sense to do so. Those can be done quickly and
easily by Process Director.”
“We wanted a solution we could drive to the business
users, avoid having to hire developers or add to the IT
backlog. Process Director is an effective solution that
can be used for anything one can imagine,” Nomland
said.
ANALYSIS, ALIGNMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
From Finance and Accounting perspectives, if Festival
had not implemented Process Director, the company
would have had to add headcount to address the
needs of the new stores. Process Director has enabled
Festival to offset that, while also reducing rework.
Another of the company’s goals, and a goal echoed by
organizations of all sizes across the globe, is executing
on the alignment of business and IT. What is common
to that goal is that IT is always asked to do more
than it has the capacity to accomplish. Nomland is
confident that having a solution like Process Director
in place will free up additional time and resources
for the Festival team. Furthermore, IT is now able to
provide more visibility into costs and cost savings,
with business and IT alignment the result of this
analysis.
“We are an expanding company and will always be
looking for opportunities to improve and innovate.
This is a time of hyper growth, and we are making the
right decisions based on solid information,” Nomland
concluded.
We wanted a solution we could drive to the business users,
avoid having to hire developers or add to the IT backlog.
www.bplogix.com
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