Cerealto’s pursuit to find the right blend of tech and business targets

The mission of aligning Cerealto’s IT with business objectives is the ongoing responsibility of CIO Juan Manuel García Dujo. After more than a decade leading the digital transformation and cybersecurity initiatives of the services company, he’s managed to forge a synergy where tech and information security are established as fundamental pillars for business success. His mission, after all, has always been to turn tech into an enabler that drives business objectives, and never treat it as an end in itself.

“Technology must be agile, easy, and secure so people can extract the greatest value from it,” he says. This approach has led him to oversee strategic projects with key tech providers, and foster continuous innovation in the organization — and all of this with the purpose of ensuring Cerealto remains at the forefront in a constantly evolving digital environment.

The framework of a digital strategy

Under García Dujo’s leadership is the technological layer that must be organized to deliver measurable successes, which includes other aspects such as infrastructure, applications, and IT services. “We’re an industrial company, which can be a handicap since we manufacture food products, so the focus is on customer service and production, and how technology can help,” he says. In this sense, one of the main lines of the transformation plan he’s structured is to fit tech in as a catalyst for the business. “We want to provide solutions that add value to the organization.”

So IT first provides support and advice on back-office technologies that are highly focused on predictability for financial planning or future supply-and-demand. And second, IT looks at process optimization to make the day-to-day work more productive and efficient.

“Technology exists at the foundation of the company,” he says. “We work across departments to provide solutions and boost the bottom line.”

From ERP evolution to Industry 4.0 transformation

Among the priorities included in Cerealto’s digital transformation plan is the evolution of its ERP to new technologies proposed by SAP within the HANA software ecosystem. According to García Dujo, this is a challenge that involves all of Cerealtos’ clients. “With this migration, we’re looking at how to provide the greatest value with a return in the medium and long term,” he says. Once the process is underway, he adds, “it’ll allow us to obtain all the artificial intelligence capacity that SAP offers.”

Another vertical of the plan is closely related to Industry 4.0 projects, or how to obtain the greatest amount of information from manufacturing lines in order to analyze them. They also focus on improving internal resources to better map out customer demand and fit it into business forecasts. “Here we can use all the tools and data we have to create reasonably good predictions that result in the optimization of resources,” he says.

Cybersecurity is also integral to García Dujo’s approach to transform. “In order to survive, to be able to continue with the digital plan, cybersecurity must be conceived in a transversal way in the organization and the infrastructure layer,” he says.

Compliance with the established roadmap

The roadmap that García Dujo describes is a plan that evolves over time. And although there are actions that have an established return with a start and end date, in general terms, this is based on continuous improvement. “After a change in the company’s ownership in 2023, Cerealto promoted a new approach in which it firmly invests in technology,” he says. “Since then, the organization has been using it to further help drive efficiencies.”

Regarding specific technologies he’s focusing on, he references RPA, AI pilots to get the most out of it in an industrial area, and all the tools to future plan and manage data. To deploy these tools, increasing investment in IT is necessary. “The budget has grown at the same rate as the company has,” he says. “And although it can always be improved, our job is to optimize it as much as possible by looking for return applications.”

Challenges to the agenda

Regarding the priorities that top his agenda for the foreseeable future, García Dujo highlights the need to ensure that technology benefits the company, and doesn’t derail business objectives. “We need to understand how we can integrate new technologies such as generative AI and its applicability in the business,” he says, “as well as develop use cases based on ROI so as not to dilute resources in proofs of concept that go nowhere.”

His key objective is to achieve a greater degree of success by aligning technology, corporation, and talent to deliver greater added value. But to achieve that success relies on overcoming obstacles and constraints tied to talent management, cybersecurity administration, and promotion of operational resilience — all in the effort to bring IT closer to the business. “Technology is at the base of the company,” he says. “We’re a cross-department that provides solutions to boost the bottom line.”