Guiding Digital Transformation for a large agribusiness company

Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN) is one of Africa’s largest agribusinesses, with sales of $1.4 billion in 2019. During its organization-wide digital transformation process, it sought a technology vendor to digitize several manual processes. MercyCorps AgriFin, which develops meaningful products for and with smallholder farmers, hired Digital Disruptions in mid-2020 to engage with FMN and provide guidance on vendor selection and broader frameworks for digital transformation.

Approach & Outcome

As FMN is a large, established, and complex organization, a significant challenge was identifying areas of focus, especially given the market uncertainty caused by COVID-19. Two key verticals, maize and wheat, were selected for analysis. The Digital Disruptions team interviewed essential Value-Added Services (VAS) partners of FMN on their recent experiences, and conducted interviews with several global agricultural technology vendors. These interviews were designed to gauge their capabilities and how well they responded to the business requirements of FMN’s digital platform.

Digital Disruptions also advised taking a ‘test and learn’ approach to save time and costs, mainly because decisions on technology vendor partnerships are often highly ‘irreversible.’ To that end, the team recommended setting up a an experimental design process through a short pilot, which would help FMN to better assess metrics alongside key categories before making any major decisions on platform design.