Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3 - 122

food & beverage conagra brands inc.

Biegger, is part of Conagra's senior leadership team
(SLT) and reports directly to President and CEO Sean
Connolly. As a result, supply chain has a seat at the leadership table.
"That's a huge enabler, because when Dave meets
with the SLT, you've got all the business leaders there,
and finance, legal and HR are there, as well," O'Rourke
says. "The alignment happens very quickly because once
they work through the priorities and the decisions they
have to make, the SLT is aligned and they can deploy that
information to their teams. All of it cascades down, so
I can speak with my team on procurement, my buyers,
directors and senior directors or people who are focused
on the brands."
Every month, procurement focuses on what it spends
and strategies relative to the brands' pricing capabilities.
It focuses on whether certain brands are planning promotions, and if any of them plan to have specials with
customers such as Walmart or Costco. O'Rourke stresses
the importance of his team understanding what the brands
need to compete and win in the marketplace, and communication is key, but technology also helps with that.
"We have a really sophisticated tool here that was homegrown called Integrated Margin Management," he says.
"What it does is by brand, it blows out the costs of goods
and shows what it was a month ago or a year ago or whatever you need. So it gives us a really good trend. With pork,
for example, we see inflationary pressure right now in pork,
so we reviewed that last week with the meat snacks people
and showed them that inflation. Now they have information to determine their go-forward strategy. I won't speak
for them, but they have that visibility. And that engagement
with them creates better visibility."
Conagra uses a centralized sourcing model to serve its
brands because it provides O'Rourke and his team with
leverage and scale to float people and work based on
what's most critical to support the overall business. But
it also supports the company's focus on community.
"Some of that community and teamwork comes from
training packaging, ingredient, commodity and indirect
buyers together and helping them understand what
categories they may be interested in for their next role,"
O'Rourke says. "If we stayed siloed, it would be very hard
to take someone out of a spend category and bring them to
another area. Now, not only are they learning a new category, they are learning to have a home in the business and
then there is natural dedication. For example, the animal
122

Supply Chain World VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3

Communication, learning from
each other and getting input
from a lot of people helped the
Conagra and Pinnacle teams
transition after the merger.

protein team supports products like frozen meals, chili and
meat snacks. So there are natural ways we plug in, but the
goal is to have people be generalist as much as possible."

Encouraging Engagement
Conagra Brands has centered its supply chain on a single vision statement. "For us, it's 'One team defined by
innovative solutions, differentiated by inspired people,
delivering the unimaginable,'" Chief Supply Chain
Officer Biegger says.
But such a vision needs strong support, and Conagra
backs it up with four pillars comprising its people, its
organization, its communities and its commitments.
"Under each one of those four pillars, we have individual
descriptor statements," Biegger says.
Those statements are declarations of what the supply
chain organization aspires to become. "We focus on each
declaration and figure out the work that needs to be done
to make it a reality," he continues, noting that the statements were crafted with the input of a high percentage of
the supply chain's team members.
Before its acquisition last year of Pinnacle Brands,
the company sat down with associates at its locations
in Omaha and Chicago, created sub-groups, and went
through each word of the proposed vision with them.
"We listened to all of the great input and then applied it, creating an even better, more relevant vision

Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3