Dairy Processing - May/June 2022 - 36

OPERATIONS
Cyber attacks can happen in many different forms,
including ransomware, malware, phishing and viruses.
Being aware of the dangers are all part of developing cyber
security awareness.
International research and advisory firm Gartner Inc.
predicts worldwide security spending will hit $170 billion by
2022, an 8% increase in just a year.
Businesses want to know that whoever they are doing
business with are secure. Many companies will only do business
with organizations that can show they're doing their due
diligence. They want to know that they are taking security as
seriously as they do. Now, prospects are vetting their vendors.
It's not enough to simply say you're compliant anymore.
" It's really just catapulted us to have
the competitive advantage that the
organization was looking for. "
Jenny Drake, vice president, business technology, Grande Cheese Co.
" Cybersecurity, it's part of our every day DNA now. It's
not just a project here and there, it's part of daily processes
that we do, it's a part of the daily monitoring, it's partly about
the quality of people that you have to have in those roles to
protect the organization against the threats that are out there, "
said Hurley. " I think with that as an explosion over the past
three or four years has really shown our leaders and other
people in the organization, this is something new that we have
to do with, that we have to have the right people, processes,
technology to deal with it. "
MAKING THE INVESTMENT
It has never been more important for companies to make
the right investments in technology. Studies show there is a
strong correlation between profitable growth and well-aligned
technology.
36 MAY-JUN 2022 | DAIRYPROCESSING.COM
The Global CIO Survey reports that 57% of technology
budgets are used to support fundamental business operations,
while only 26% of the spending focuses on needed business
changes. Just 16% supports innovations that will power the
business into a successful future.
" When we embarked on our (digital) formation, we really
looked at it as a what the return on the investment was
going to be, " Drake said. " We had 32 legacy systems and it
was painful for the IT department to continue to support
it, nevertheless try to figure out where all the data was for
the users to make decisions. So, we were quickly able to
prove the inefficiencies in those systems and talk about the
return that we can get if we consolidated into one modern
toolset, moved us into the cloud, where we can also start to
see labor savings, and see where can we get rid of some of
the repetitive manual work and allow associates to provide
value-added work across the organization instead. So our
conversations were really around how are we going to return
the investment on this investment. "
Prioritizing technology investments is not a simple
process. There can be conflicting opportunities and
constraints. If too much is allocated to maintenance of
existing systems, new projects and innovations may be
pushed off. This can impact competitiveness and revenue.
A spending balance across innovation, growth,
productivity and maintenance coupled with a mix of targeted
investments based on business objectives, time constraints
and risks will yield an excellent outcome. Always verify that
technology investments are closely aligned so they support
the strategic goals.
" I think as things become more evident and they become
more impactful, I think IT has been given a much different
lens that they look through and look at, " said Hurley. " It just
gives us an opportunity to really come to the forefront of the
organization and have a seat at the table with the executive to
say, now IT is part of the fundamental basis of how a company
needs to operate today. "
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