Winner: Zespri - Best Tech Awards 2025 Next Gen Innovator
Zespri - Claims Transformation Download the DocumentSAP Australia and New
Zealand Best Tech Awards
2025
Zealand Best Tech Awards
2025
Best Tech SAP
Industry WebsiteProduct and Services Featured SAP Solutions
Agribusiness www.zespri.comGlobal Kiwifruit Marketing and
Distribution.
SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP S/4HANA,
SAP Fiori, SAP Integration Suite, SAP
Customer Data Cloud.
Zespri is the world’s largest marketer of premium-quality kiwifruit, proudly 100% owned by New Zealand growers. Operating across more than 50 countries,
Zespri connects growers and consumers through a unique industry structure that integrates global marketing, innovation, and s upply chain excellence. In the
2024/25 financial year, Zespri achieved a record NZ$5.14 billion in global operating revenue, reflecting strong demand and th e successful delivery of its largest-
ever crop.
With a steadfast commitment to sustainability, innovation, and grower value, Zespri continues to lead the horticultural secto r in delivering high-quality fruit and
long-term industry returns.
Zespri
Claims Transformation
Next Gen Innovator
Industry WebsiteProduct and Services Featured SAP Solutions
Agribusiness www.zespri.comGlobal Kiwifruit Marketing and
Distribution.
SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP S/4HANA,
SAP Fiori, SAP Integration Suite, SAP
Customer Data Cloud.
Zespri is the world’s largest marketer of premium-quality kiwifruit, proudly 100% owned by New Zealand growers. Operating across more than 50 countries,
Zespri connects growers and consumers through a unique industry structure that integrates global marketing, innovation, and s upply chain excellence. In the
2024/25 financial year, Zespri achieved a record NZ$5.14 billion in global operating revenue, reflecting strong demand and th e successful delivery of its largest-
ever crop.
With a steadfast commitment to sustainability, innovation, and grower value, Zespri continues to lead the horticultural secto r in delivering high-quality fruit and
long-term industry returns.
Zespri
Claims Transformation
Next Gen Innovator
Challenges
The fresh produce industry is built on trust. Anything that diminishes that trust – like product quality issues – erodes the very bedrock of our
business and our brand.
As a premium fruit brand, Zespri aims to provide a premium experience throughout the customer lifecycle. This experience extends to the
rare occasions Zespri fruit doesn’t meet agreed quality expectations.
Although only 1-2% of Zespri’s delivered fruit is subject to a quality claim, this still represents over 40,000 claims a year, totaling over $70M
New Zealand dollars. The key pain points of this process were made clear from customer and user feedback:
❯ Customers valued simplicity in claim creation, transparency in claim calculation, and speed in claim decision -making.
❯ Reflecting on existing process, customers felt the process included too much manual data entry, while they waited weeks for c laim
decisions.
❯ Internally, Zespri’s claim assessors were stuck in manual reviews cycles, while expert decision-making knowledge was locked in
individual assessors' heads, creating inconsistency and bottlenecks across our global operations.
This claims process was directly impacting Zespri's customer relationships and net promoter score. Each quality claim became a
relationship risk rather than an opportunity to demonstrate the premium customer service that defines our brand.
The challenge for the Zespri Claims team: leverage next gen digital innovation to create a claims experience that was better for customers,
less effort for Zespri assessors, and maintained our strict audit standards.
The fresh produce industry is built on trust. Anything that diminishes that trust – like product quality issues – erodes the very bedrock of our
business and our brand.
As a premium fruit brand, Zespri aims to provide a premium experience throughout the customer lifecycle. This experience extends to the
rare occasions Zespri fruit doesn’t meet agreed quality expectations.
Although only 1-2% of Zespri’s delivered fruit is subject to a quality claim, this still represents over 40,000 claims a year, totaling over $70M
New Zealand dollars. The key pain points of this process were made clear from customer and user feedback:
❯ Customers valued simplicity in claim creation, transparency in claim calculation, and speed in claim decision -making.
❯ Reflecting on existing process, customers felt the process included too much manual data entry, while they waited weeks for c laim
decisions.
❯ Internally, Zespri’s claim assessors were stuck in manual reviews cycles, while expert decision-making knowledge was locked in
individual assessors' heads, creating inconsistency and bottlenecks across our global operations.
This claims process was directly impacting Zespri's customer relationships and net promoter score. Each quality claim became a
relationship risk rather than an opportunity to demonstrate the premium customer service that defines our brand.
The challenge for the Zespri Claims team: leverage next gen digital innovation to create a claims experience that was better for customers,
less effort for Zespri assessors, and maintained our strict audit standards.
Solution
We created an end-to-end digital claims process, via a system that codifies expert judgment at scale, while maintaining the human oversight that
complex quality decisions require.
The claims platform architecture combines multiple SAP technologies with leading-edge process intelligence, specifically:
❯ Customer-centric design via Commerce Cloud: SAP Commerce Cloud as our customer interface, enabling customer self-service of claims
creation via an intuitive, guided claims journey with contextual messaging, actionable error prompts and a simplified UI for multi -delivery claim
creation in as little as 28 seconds.
❯ Powerful data via S/4HANA: Integration with our clean core SAP S/4HANA via Event Mesh, providing supply chain data to the portal,
drastically simplifying user input requirements and reducing human error risks. This has resulted in bulk processing of claim s on over 1,000
deliveries in less than two minutes.
❯ Smart Automation via BTP & Camunda: Once a claim is created, SAP BTP leverages a native integration to Camunda to deliver ‘human in
the loop’ process orchestration – codifying and automating application of the rules our assessors used to carry in their heads. These rules are
monitored and refined through our AI-enabled process mining solution Celonis.
❯ Human-in-the-loop via Fiori: Even in a world of increased automation, human judgment remains critical. Two new SAP Fiori apps for Zespri
claims assessors create next-generation user experiences. Enabled by CDS views, these highly customizable apps empower assessors to deep
dive into our end-to-end supply chain data when making decisions – including data integrated from our quality inspection tool, Clarifresh.
We couldn’t have deployed a solution this comprehensive, across Japan, China, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, India, United States, and
Europe without the next gen capability and enterprise-grade scalability that SAP's integrated ecosystem provides.
We created an end-to-end digital claims process, via a system that codifies expert judgment at scale, while maintaining the human oversight that
complex quality decisions require.
The claims platform architecture combines multiple SAP technologies with leading-edge process intelligence, specifically:
❯ Customer-centric design via Commerce Cloud: SAP Commerce Cloud as our customer interface, enabling customer self-service of claims
creation via an intuitive, guided claims journey with contextual messaging, actionable error prompts and a simplified UI for multi -delivery claim
creation in as little as 28 seconds.
❯ Powerful data via S/4HANA: Integration with our clean core SAP S/4HANA via Event Mesh, providing supply chain data to the portal,
drastically simplifying user input requirements and reducing human error risks. This has resulted in bulk processing of claim s on over 1,000
deliveries in less than two minutes.
❯ Smart Automation via BTP & Camunda: Once a claim is created, SAP BTP leverages a native integration to Camunda to deliver ‘human in
the loop’ process orchestration – codifying and automating application of the rules our assessors used to carry in their heads. These rules are
monitored and refined through our AI-enabled process mining solution Celonis.
❯ Human-in-the-loop via Fiori: Even in a world of increased automation, human judgment remains critical. Two new SAP Fiori apps for Zespri
claims assessors create next-generation user experiences. Enabled by CDS views, these highly customizable apps empower assessors to deep
dive into our end-to-end supply chain data when making decisions – including data integrated from our quality inspection tool, Clarifresh.
We couldn’t have deployed a solution this comprehensive, across Japan, China, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, India, United States, and
Europe without the next gen capability and enterprise-grade scalability that SAP's integrated ecosystem provides.
Impact
Under 30 seconds for
customer-initiated, multi-claim
creation.
80% of claims enable
automated recommendations for
human assessors.
Centralised portal processing
1,000+ deliveries in under
2 minutes.
Zespri and our customers now benefit from a streamlined, consistent Claims process that reduces manual workload and increases speed and accuracy:
❯ Customers enjoy a simplified claim creation experience – one that allows them to process claims with less manual effort and rework – while reducing claim resolution time
❯ Zespri business users benefit from automation - reducing the time they spend on ‘straightforward’ claims, allowing them to focus their energy and judgment on larger, more
complex claims.
❯ The Zespri supply chain benefits from the lifecycle view the new Fiori apps provide - leading to preventative improvements across our logistics activities.
❯ Critically, business users feel ownership of the digital solution, with a senior Supply Chain leader describing this as "themost business-centric digital project Zespri has ever
run.“ while the customer-centric system and process meaningfully differentiates Zespri from competitors.
Before this project, the claims process was manual and slow, requiring significant data input. Following this project, it is automated, customer-centric, data-rich and robust.
This project positions Zespri for future development in predictive claim prevention, computer vision and deeper supply chain data integration — with an eye on scaling with
Zespri’s ambitious quality, growth, and customer experience goals. By transforming its claims process, Zespri has enhanced its entire supply chain — turning a defect into an
opportunity to strengthening relationships customers.
Under 30 seconds for
customer-initiated, multi-claim
creation.
80% of claims enable
automated recommendations for
human assessors.
Centralised portal processing
1,000+ deliveries in under
2 minutes.
Zespri and our customers now benefit from a streamlined, consistent Claims process that reduces manual workload and increases speed and accuracy:
❯ Customers enjoy a simplified claim creation experience – one that allows them to process claims with less manual effort and rework – while reducing claim resolution time
❯ Zespri business users benefit from automation - reducing the time they spend on ‘straightforward’ claims, allowing them to focus their energy and judgment on larger, more
complex claims.
❯ The Zespri supply chain benefits from the lifecycle view the new Fiori apps provide - leading to preventative improvements across our logistics activities.
❯ Critically, business users feel ownership of the digital solution, with a senior Supply Chain leader describing this as "themost business-centric digital project Zespri has ever
run.“ while the customer-centric system and process meaningfully differentiates Zespri from competitors.
Before this project, the claims process was manual and slow, requiring significant data input. Following this project, it is automated, customer-centric, data-rich and robust.
This project positions Zespri for future development in predictive claim prevention, computer vision and deeper supply chain data integration — with an eye on scaling with
Zespri’s ambitious quality, growth, and customer experience goals. By transforming its claims process, Zespri has enhanced its entire supply chain — turning a defect into an
opportunity to strengthening relationships customers.
“”Our customers were clear—make it easier, faster and more transparent. We listened. And with SAP’s
tech behind us, we’ve built a claims experience that’s not just efficient, but genuinely customer -first.
It’s a great example of how smart design and the right tools can turn a friction point into a brand
strength.
Rahul Bagde, Head of In Market Supply Chain
tech behind us, we’ve built a claims experience that’s not just efficient, but genuinely customer -first.
It’s a great example of how smart design and the right tools can turn a friction point into a brand
strength.
Rahul Bagde, Head of In Market Supply Chain