Fragmented to future-ready: Fortune 50 corporation unifies global operations 

The challenge 

A global Fortune 50 agriculture and nutrition corporation grew rapidly through acquisitions, uncovering new customer and market opportunities—but also faced mounting operational complexities. The company was running more than 65 ERP systems across dozens of countries, with some core business units still relying on spreadsheets and even pen-and-paper processes. The need to pay down technical debt, mature business processes, and enable real-time reporting heightened their sense of urgency, prompting them to engage external partners to create value. 

Legacy systems and fragmented operations led to siloed data, while leaders lacked a unified view of organizational performance, making it hard to scale, govern, or pivot quickly—ultimately slowing the company’s path to growth.  With a global outsourcing initiative on the horizon and no enterprise risk framework in place, the business needed a trusted partner to modernize its systems, align global processes, and guide its people and operations through the transformation.  

The solution 

Vaco approached the partnership as more than just a staffing or consulting engagement. Acting as a strategic advisor, the team worked alongside business and IT leaders to guide the company’s multi-year transformation. Together, they mapped out future-state processes, tackled ERP consolidation, implemented a cloud-based ERP solution, and established governance structures to support growth at scale. Vaco became the exclusive partner for staffing the company’s project management office (PMO), surpassing at least three competitors and even replacing a major global integrator in the process. 

One of the CFO’s top priorities was modernizing the company’s legacy data and analytics estate to address its lack of speed and reporting agility, inaccurate financial reporting, and shadow IT. Vaco became the organization’s go-to partner for this effort, leading the migration to a modern data platform built on Databricks and Microsoft PowerBI. 

Beyond the technology transformation, Vaco led major organizational change management workstreams, managed the transition of key shared services functions to a global outsourcing partner, and upskilled internal IT program and project managers on a global scale. By anticipating needs rather than reacting to them, Vaco delivered experienced program leaders, built trust across functions, and helped the company make meaningful progress at every stage. 

Our impact 

The digital transformation spanned 50+ countries, touching every part of the organization—resulting in a stronger, more connected enterprise equipped for global growth. Through the partnership, the organization: 

• Advanced ERP systems consolidation and rationalization efforts.  

• Modernized legacy processes across finance, IT, and shared services functions helping create scalable global workflows. 

• Migrated to a multi-cloud data estate including SAP Datasphere and Databricks with PowerBI to visualize the CFO’s vision of democratizing data. 

• Improved decision-making and accountability through real-time reporting, unified governance, and value realization tracking. 

• Delivered successful global change management, communications, and training to ensure smooth transitions, including the outsourcing of major shared services functions. 

• Established a high-performing PMO. 

• Identified Vaco as a key partner in one of the world’s largest digital transformation efforts