Nutreco: making business processes more mature, consistent and efficient

The challenge: keeping hundreds of business processes running smoothly

Behind much of the meat and fish on our plates lies a supply chain most people never see. Nutreco stands as the global market leader in animal nutrition and aquafeed at the very start of that chain.

With more than a hundred years of history and thousands of employees across dozens of countries, Nutreco works every day toward its mission: Feeding the Future. A challenge of that scale doesn't just depend on knowledge of nutrition, but just as much on the hundreds of business processes that keep the organization running smoothly worldwide.

That's where the Hyper Automation Team comes in: the central team within Nutreco that supports the entire organization in automating business processes on the Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft's low-code environment for business applications.

Nutreco needed an external specialist to support them

The Hyper Automation Team directs all Power Platform projects within Nutreco and also supports citizen developers: employees who build simple apps themselves. That's a lot to handle, and it became a challenge. The team had its hands full, and in-depth technical expertise wasn't always available internally.

That's why the team decided to bring in dedicated expertise. They found Blis Digital. Elianne Burgers, our regular point of contact for Nutreco, explains:

"Nutreco came to us because of our specific Power Platform expertise. The collaboration started with a few standalone Power Pages projects. It has since grown into a genuine partnership."

The same way of working at every location

An organization active in dozens of countries can't afford a patchwork of separate ways of working. The Hyper Automation Team's ambition is clear: make business processes more mature, consistent and efficient, in the same way everywhere.

"Over the past few years we've worked together and raised the maturity level step by step," says Elianne. "Consistency is a common thread throughout. Registering a visitor, for example, should work the same way at every location."

That consistency pays off in more than one way:

"First of all, fixed, clear processes make things easier for everyone. On top of that, Nutreco has ambitious goals. Cost savings and more efficient processes are naturally part of that too."

Ideas follow a fixed way of working

A project usually starts with a question or idea from the business.

To make sure only work with demonstrable value gets picked up, every idea is first weighed during a business value assessment. What value does it add, for which department, and does that weigh up against the investment?

Once an idea passes the business value assessment, it lands with us. We start with an intake conversation covering a few key questions: what do you want to achieve, which systems does it need to talk to, how should the process run? That quickly leads to a high-level architecture and a rough first cost estimate.

From there, it's a matter of working closely together. Alongside the Hyper Automation Team, we translate the request into concrete user stories, worked out in detail and embedded in the team's sprint rhythm. We run full sprints in step with Nutreco.

Not every idea is immediately ready to be built. For questions with an uncertain outcome, we set up a proof of concept or MVP together with the Hyper Automation Team. That lets us technically demonstrate whether something is feasible, or not, because it brings too much complexity or delivers too little. That way, both parties carefully decide where scarce time should go.

We're part of the team, not just a supplier

Our collaboration doesn't look like classic outsourcing. Especially on projects that take a lot of time, we work alongside the Hyper Automation Team as full colleagues.

Elianne: "We join the dailies, the sprint reviews and the demos. We do that mainly because, as Blis Digital, we want to understand why we're doing something. That makes you a much better conversation partner throughout the whole project."

For Nutreco, we're mainly a flexible extension: additional capacity to actually get projects done. And it works both ways.

Elianne explains: "For us, a big advantage is that we can make focused progress on projects while Nutreco's Hyper Automation Team takes care of all the internal alignment."

From global compliance screening to a handy facilities app

Together we picked up all kinds of projects, from large and sensitive to small and everyday.

We tackled many processes that still relied on manually re-typing ERP data, a process that's often error-prone and labor-intensive. We replaced these manual processes with smarter solutions, using the ERP data as the single source of truth.

A larger project was the ethics & compliance process. Because Nutreco operates internationally, it screens customers and suppliers worldwide. We helped streamline that process, so approvals go out at the right moment, the right people are informed, and an audit trail is in place in case questions come up later about what was decided and when.

A few steps down the complexity ladder is a very practical example: an app that lets anyone easily register visitors or report facility incidents. A broken light? One photo, and the facility team can act. Not the most sophisticated technically, but something the business genuinely benefits from.

Sparring as equals, open communication and staying sharp

What makes this collaboration work so well? According to Elianne, it comes down to a few things: being able to spar at a substantive level, mature internal processes, clear frameworks and a personal click.

Elianne: "Because it's not simply about handing over execution, both parties sometimes had to figure out the right way to work together. That process was fun and creative. What fits Nutreco's business processes, and what fits how we approach things at Blis Digital?"

The role of expertise partner keeps us sharp at Blis Digital:

"Especially now that AI is part of the Power Platform, it's important to keep up. We want to remain the expert our clients expect. That's why we share knowledge internally through lunch-and-learns and knowledge evenings, and our team also attends conferences and events to stay up to date."

Together we've achieved great results

What has our collaboration delivered so far? Streamlined, consistent processes that run the same way worldwide, a demonstrable contribution to cost savings and efficiency, and an organization that becomes more mature process by process. From error-prone manual work to structured, scalable solutions.

Elianne concludes: "Together you get further."