Campbell Soup Company
Autor: a7mad3ali • November 19, 2017 • Case Study • 505 Words (3 Pages) • 629 Views
Situation Analysis:
Campbell, a Soup Company founded in 1869 was a global manufacturer and marketer of high quality foods and simple meals. Its headquarters is located in Camden, New Jersey and has 41 manufacturing facilities in 11 countries. Moreover, it has sales offices in some of the 120 countries where its products were being sold. The company’s operations are divided into four segments:
- U.S. Soup, Sauces and Beverages Including (Campbell’s soups, V8 Juice, etc..)
- Baking and Snacking Including (Pepperidge Farm cookies, Arnott’s biscuits, etc..)
- International Soup & Sauces Including (International sales of Prego, Royco soups, etc..)
- Others Including (Godiva Chocolates and Away from Home Operations
In 2001, Douglas Conant was appointed as CEO for Campbell. By that time, Campbell was facing many competitive pressures due to its consumers becoming more price and health conscious, industry being dominated by giants like Kraft and Nestle and retail partners becoming powerful and competing with Campbell through their private label offerings. In the same year, Doreen Wright was appointed as the first CIO in the cooperate reporting directly to the CEO. The IT organization Wright was managing was hugely decentralized; where each business around the world had its own separate IT department making its own decisions without being aligned to one central IT department.
Afterwards, Wright has decided to renegotiate the agreement back in 1995 between Campbell and IBM on outsourcing most Campbell’s IT operations and desktop support to IBM. The new deal shifted some responsibilities between IBM and Campbell, such that direct interactions with internal clients were handled by Campbell’s staff (Desktop support) and IBM handled more application maintenance. IBM provided Campbell with a reliable, cost effective IT infrastructure with a world class IT operational processes, while Campbell recognized IBM’s need for reasonable profitability and revenue growth. Thus, This deal was a mutual benefit for both partners.
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