Staughton Group simplifies business processes with Oracle Cloud

The Staughton Group produces raw meat as an ingredient for pet food. It also makes ready-to-consume pet treats under brands such as Aussie Pet Health and Balanced Life, as well as private labels for supermarket chains. The company is Australia’s largest supplier of raw ingredients for pet food, operates the biggest thermal drying facility for pet treats in the southern hemisphere, and services both national and international markets.

With growth, however, came challenges. The company needed to automate business operations to ensure competitive advantage. Until recently, it managed a complex set of business processes—from gathering raw materials from over 50 abattoirs to chilling, drying, processing, and manufacturing to distribution and exporting—using a mix of IT solutions.

This approach made it hard to manage complexity, growth, additional products, and increased requirements for control and compliance from large retail chains. It also resulted in siloed business functions, manual processes, and a lack of business visibility. The group had no formal purchasing system, which impacted cost controls.

The Staughton Group needed an integrated and scalable IT core that could stitch together the growing enterprise and serve as a single data and management platform. It also wanted the platform to be flexible, cost-effective, and serve as a launchpad for future innovation.

A requirements-gathering exercise resulted in a list of 500 tools the Staughton Group needed to evaluate. Based on this list, the group issued an expression of interest to more than 50.

After the rigorous selection process, the Staughton Group chose Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne platform running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) automates Staughton Group’s multiple business processes, improving productivity levels across functions including finance, procurement, inventory, manufacturing, and sales. Now, the company has real-time reporting, providing greater financial and operational visibility.

The company has been growing quickly and has increased its administrative staff from 7 to over 100 in the last five years. While it used to dispatch one or two 40-foot containers a week, it now sends between 35 and 45 containers.

The implementation was coupled with mobility functionality on production floors and at warehouses. As a result, staffers no longer have to update systems with data as often as before, allowing them to focus on customer-facing jobs, such as ensuring shipments are dispatched on schedule.

DXC Practice for Oracle, which was chosen from a field of 50 competing organizations, proved pivotal to the implementation. Staughton Group commends the partner for its knowledge, expertise, and dedication. Staughton Group continues to depend on DXC for its managed services and advice on future application functionality.