How De Heus embraced digital transformation with expertise from Proshore

de hues executives with remote development team members from Proshore Nepal

De Heus is one of the largest and longest-established animal nutrition companies in the world. It began in 1911, supplying grain to local farmers in the Netherlands. Since then, it’s remained a family-owned business and expanded internationally, starting with the acquisition of Koudijs in 1998. Today it operates from 90 locations around the world – from Europe to Asia, South America to Africa – exporting to more than 70 countries.

Industry

Based in

Product

Agriculture

Worldwide 🌍

Animal feed

De Heus is a veteran of the agricultural industry. In fact, it’s supplied farmers with animal feed for over a century. Its innovations and expertise in animal nutrition help thousands of farmers every year to optimize production. Now run by the fourth generation, De Heus has remained a family business that’s cultivated mutual loyalty with both its employees and customers. 

But you don’t stand the test of time by standing still. With a passion for progress, and to meet the ever-changing needs of its customers, De Heus needed to digitally transform. But the agricultural sector is not always seen as the most technologically advanced – especially not in developing countries.

01.

The Initial Challenge

Whilst innovative in its own field, De Heus was not a software company, and some of its business processes were being managed via spreadsheets. Like a lot of established companies, De Heus also had many legacy systems, a tech stack accumulated over many years. The challenge was how to streamline and consolidate its existing tech stack into the cloud, whilst at the same time, incorporating greenfield software projects.  

Group Manager Data & Analytics, Pascal van Hattum saw an opportunity for De Heus to become much more efficient, and ultimately more scalable, by replacing Excel-based workflows with custom-coded software and automations built in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

At first, the decision-makers at De Heus were concerned that building custom software solutions might be costly and slightly misaligned with their core business operations. That’s when Pascal brought in Proshore to collaborate on a proposal that highlighted the cost efficiencies and business value that the right custom-coded software could bring to De Heus’s operations.

Our successful collaboration with Proshore is built on quality, flexibility, and a shared, workable approach.
Pascal van Hattum, De Heus
Group Manager Data & Analytics

02.

The Solution

Sometimes it can be hard for non-technical leaders to see the immediate business benefits of an internal software project. But collaborating with the Global IT Services division of De Heus, our team got the buy-in it needed to help digitally transform the organization through software development. Our approach had three phases:

  1. Exploration to understand the business needs of each business unit, design a solution, and provide an estimate of the cost.
  2. Development was set up in collaboration with the company’s Global IT Services division. 
  3. Focus on delivering maintainable systems and a more streamlined tech stack.

To support De Heus’s business goals, we set up a four-person development team with a range of expertise. Our work addressed three core audiences: customers (farmers), producers, and administrators. 

Across these segments, we developed a suite of 13 apps including Coolcare, Hen Scoring, Poultry Coach, and a range of internal applications. These apps, connected to the company’s global data lake, were to live inside the Azure Cloud. 

Each team member collaborated on different apps and features based on priority. From a technical perspective, the biggest challenge was to complete the migration within a single 2-week sprint. Thankfully, there was a strong collaboration with the De Heus infrastructure team. They created the resource group and exposed all the endpoints, and we handled the migration of existing databases and sites.

To minimize disruption to services, customers were not transferred immediately – legacy resources were kept running in parallel until the new systems were ready. Considering the size and scale of the migration, this was no easy feat. 

Our challenge was bridging the gap between evolving requirements and long development cycles. By embracing shorter sprints, we could stay aligned with progress and adapt to changes in real-time.
Floris van Haaren, De Heus
Project Manager Software Development

Technology​

The Proshore team used a range of complementary technologies to perform the cloud migration and deliver a suite of 13 apps. That included: Azure for Infrastructure, .NET for backend systems, React for the front end, and Flutter for mobile apps.

03.

The Impact

Unlike many of our customers who have a single business objective in mind, De Heus’s digital transformation impacted multiple services and business units at the same time. This created space for individual business streams to own their processes and customize standardized technology to meet their specific operational needs.

If you are looking for digital transformation of your business, why not try our offshore development services? At a fraction of the cost, we can take ownership of technological developments while you focus on what you do best – grow your business.

Partnership result

Switching to app-based solutions engineered by Proshore has delivered tangible efficiencies across different business units within De Heus. 

It’s also helped to enhance customers’ experience of its products and services for optimizing animal feed. Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve done for De Hues to date,

  • Delivery of seamless digital transformation to a market leader in animal feed.
  • Designed a suite of apps for use across support multiple business units.
  • Migrated on-prem infrastructure to Microsoft Azure Cloud.
  • Harmonized systems and technologies across the organization.
  • Phased customer migration to minimize service disruption.
  • Managed client expectations and balanced multiple projects and priorities.
Jeroen Haico
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