Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), a national, farmer-owned dairy cooperative, completed deployment of Anaplan, a planning and performance management platform, to strengthen its financial planning and analysis. The Anaplan platform will allow DFA to more precisely budget and forecast financials to better drive accountability within the business and maximize returns for its members.

DFA chose Anaplan over six other vendors based on two key factors: the ability to model complex business scenarios in a diverse business environment without sacrificing speed and end user experience; and its ease of implementation, from integration with existing workflows to its easy learning curve for DFA staff.

“As a co-op, we are continually looking for innovative ways to bring value back to our members,” said Marij Kouwenhoven, chief information officer of DFA. “Anaplan is helping forecast and model at a much more granular level across our business, down to plant-level expenses and ingredient-level costs. With Anaplan, we’re skipping a decade on a typical technology roadmap, adding value to our business planning process and unlocking new performance insights.”

DFA is a national dairy cooperative that serves and is owned by more than 14,000 dairy farmer-members across 48 states. DFA produces dairy products under brands including Borden cheese, Keller’s Creamery butter and Kemps. DFA also is one of the country’s most diversified manufacturers of dairy products, food components and ingredients, with 41 DFA-owned manufacturing plants, and is a leader in formulating and packaging shelf-stable dairy products.

“From an IT and operations standpoint, the complexity that DFA manages is staggering,” said Simon Tucker, chief customer officer at Anaplan.

Kouwenhoven continued, “We’re looking forward to the benefits of using this tool to empower our users. Anaplan’s user-friendliness means DFA teams can be trained and certified on the platform quickly, so they can build complex models that help drive efficiency.”

The Anaplan platform enables planning and performance management for companies in all industries and in every part of the business, including financial planning and analysis. The Anaplan App Hub offers specialized apps for financial planning and analysis that enable business users to run what-if scenarios, analyze results, and gain full transparency into financial and operational drivers.  

Source: Dairy Farmers of America