De Prado: Cultivating best practices and improving business processes with a transformation rooted in SAP Cloud ERP
An innovative growth journey with SAP solutions
Already the world’s largest olive oil producer, Grupo De Prado has its sights set on continued international expansion. With an SAP Cloud ERP solution, it has streamlined processes, unified data, and cultivated a foundation for advanced operations that will help it continue to exceed expectations in a changing agricultural world.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Agribusiness | Córdoba, Spain | 1,200 employees |
less time expected to be spent on repetitive tasks, thanks to automation that will free resources for analysis and strategic decision-making.
less time required for the monthly accounting close.
CIO, Grupo De Prado
Kick-starting a transformation grounded in best practices
Founded in 1831 in Baena, Spain’s cradle of olive oil, Grupo De Prado is a family-owned agricultural firm rooted in tradition. It grows the highest-quality olives and almonds across more than 74,000 acres of land and runs an olive-processing plant, six olive oil mills, and two almond-processing facilities. The group also includes an agricultural advisory service that shares centuries-old knowledge of the cultivation of olive and almond trees. In all these operations, De Prado prioritizes sustainability through energy-efficient practices and a firm commitment to the environment.
In 2000, De Prado embarked on a program of international expansion. Exports to 18 countries now account for 40% of production, with plans to increase this to between 45% and 50% in the coming years. However, the company’s highly customized on-premises ERP solution was unable to support these growth plans. With different databases and a lack of integration among group companies, De Prado found it impossible to obtain a unified view of suppliers and customers. Logistics and production data was siloed, purchasing processes took place outside the main IT system, and IT teams had to develop multiple add-ons to support workflows. All of this led to a lack of transparency and high volumes of manual work.
De Prado set out to centralize its company information in a single system. Group CIO José Luis Ortiz explains: “Our previous tools didn’t offer a holistic view of the business. We needed to change that by bringing together the management of all departments in one place.”
But this project wasn’t about, in Ortiz’s words, “simply adding another tool.” The right solution would enable De Prado to adopt best practices and processes established by global leaders and embrace advanced ways of working.
Group Director of Administration, Management Control, and Information Systems; Grupo De Prado
Fostering growth with integrated business applications and data
Already an established leader in the agricultural sector’s digital transformation, De Prado uses many digital business applications to improve processes from olive and almond receipt to the dispatch of oils.
To transform its accounting and controlling processes, including group reporting, receivables management, cash management, and financial closing, the company decided to implement an SAP Cloud ERP solution and the SAP Ariba Invoicing solution.
According to Ortiz, these solutions would allow the company to “standardize and optimize processes, align them with industry best practices, and adapt them to our specific needs.” They would also support the smooth integration of new companies and employees into the organization, “enabling transitions that are consistent with our operational methodology.”
On the IT side, Antonio Molina, group director of administration, management control, and information systems, notes that these SAP solutions stood out for their “superior capacity to handle and process large volumes of data.” Molina adds that the solutions would help De Prado unify and improve administrative processes by managing its complex corporate structure more efficiently. Embedded AI capabilities, data, and business applications within SAP Business Suite were another selling point.
De Prado set itself a six-month deadline for deploying these SAP solutions in Spain, to be followed by another six-month project in Portugal. The company embarked on a transformation journey, smoothly integrating more than 200 company codes in a single ERP solution.
Nurturing a culture of efficiency, transparency, and collaboration
After a successful go-live in Spain, De Prado has already gained a unified view of customers and suppliers, joint purchasing, and cost control. SAP Cloud ERP smoothly integrates processes from manufacturing to payroll, meaning, for example, banking transactions are automatically generated without manual input.
Employees benefit from cloud-based solutions that are accessible from diverse locations. Thanks to recognized best practices and tools that streamline and optimize their daily tasks, they can work more efficiently. Although it’s early in the project, Ortiz expects these improvements to core processes to boost productivity across the company and enhance collaboration between departments and teams.
Similarly, when it comes to accounting and control, Molina says: “We expect to see improvements in our accounting processes, including the ability to work with a specific, standardized chart of accounts for our companies in Spain. We also anticipate the integration of companies from other countries under a unified, groupwide chart of accounts to streamline administrative processes and improve consistency and efficiency.” In addition, Molina looks forward to improvements in data accuracy and the speed of financial closing.
When it comes to the financial controlling team’s ability to monitor and manage budgets, Molina is confident that SAP Cloud ERP “will significantly improve our ability to detect and analyze variances not only in income and expenditure but also in areas such as capital expenditure, volumes, and yields. These capabilities are crucial for more-effective and timely monitoring.”
All of these developments improve decision-making across the finance department. Molina explains: “We expect SAP Cloud ERP to reduce time spent on routine tasks, allowing us to allocate more resources to analysis and strategic decision-making. This efficiency will be a key factor in the department’s ongoing development and operational efficiency.”
Branching out with new technology to sustain a legacy of leadership
Having witnessed the benefits of SAP Cloud ERP in its Spanish project, De Prado continues to work on the Portuguese rollout. This project is more involved, due to the higher number of business entities and more complex manufacturing processes in De Prado’s Portuguese operations. The group also needs to ensure compliance with Portugal’s regulatory requirements. Ortiz is confident in its success, noting, “This presents a significant challenge, but we are well prepared to meet it.”
Meanwhile, the group is looking at the potential of the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to help it unify and govern SAP software data and smoothly connect it with third-party data. In this way, it can give line-of-business leaders context in which to make even more impactful decisions.
De Prado is also exploring how embedded AI within SAP Business Suite can support its proud history of combining tradition with innovation to advance the agricultural sector in a sustainable and responsible way.