Sargento Foods: Compliant Content Management Made Easy with CARA

About Sargento

With over 2,600 employees and net sales of nearly $1.8 billion, Sargento is a family-owned company that has been a leader in cheese for 70 years. Founded in 1953 in Plymouth, Wisconsin, Sargento is proud to be the company that successfully introduced America to pre-packaged sliced and shredded natural cheeses and cheese blends. Today, Sargento remains Wisconsin based, where they manufacture and market amazing shredded, sliced, and snack natural cheese products and ingredients, on its journey to be the most innovative and best-loved real food company. Sargento leadership lives to serve local communities and employees, whom they refer to as the Sargento Family.

The company maintains a lean and agile IT department, leveraging technology to effectively organise and manage corporate and compliance-related content, as well as associated business processes.

As a food manufacturer, Sargento is obligated to uphold and exhibit the highest standards of quality and food safety controls, while also responding promptly and effectively to periodic audits.

Historically, the business has managed its corporate and compliance-related documentation separately because of the addition requirements around compliance.

Previous Challenges and Selecting CARA

Sargento’s previous content management system lacked the necessary agility, flexibility, and control. Managing the growing volume of compliance documents, estimated at 25,000 – 30,000, not including multiple versions, was also becoming a challenge. These documents included essential information like specifications, recipes, formulae, and standard operating procedures (SOPs). Additionally, the limited number of VPN connections (300), compared to the workforce size (~2,600), created access issues for employees. This constraint became especially problematic with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and remote work schedules, underscoring the need for a more accessible system.

Sargento selected CARA for its flexibility and single integrated platform approach to managing documents, data, and business processes, while maintaining compliance and adherence to regulatory requirements.

Cloud Migration

As part of a strategic move to reduce reliance on its on-premises infrastructure, Sargento decided to migrate to the cloud, using the Box SaaS service integrated with CARA. Sargento’s existing on-premises infrastructure was consuming a significant amount of internal IT resources.

Sowmya Alluri, Sargento Principal Business Systems Analyst highlighted that “it was the ideal solution for our ongoing compliance needs because it integrated effortlessly, and out employees were already familiar with the CARA interface.”

The cloud-based system not only provided the same level of compliance control as the on-premises version but also improved accessibility for employees. This was particularly impactful during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling a more distributed workforce.

Tim Bublitz, Sargento Senior Manager – Digital Workplace, emphasised trust in the product: “Our long-standing relationship with Generis has been valuable, and the product consistently delivers on the use cases it promises. Moving from on-premises to the cloud significantly reduced our IT burden, as system management is now managed by Generis.“

Easy Configurability and Effortless Updates

One of CARA’s most valuable features for Sargento has been its configurability. The system offers flexibility in both configuration and customisation, which is particularly useful for a company of Sargento’s size, with a diverse user base that includes knowledge workers and manufacturing personnel. By simplifying the interface for those requiring fewer features, CARA enables tailored user experiences that improve both efficiency and user-friendliness.

The flexibility offered by CARA in configuring the user interface and experience eliminates the need for complex development work. This ease of configuration also translated toa rapid rollout of new features with a much shorter timeframe, from initiation to go-live, compared to previous tools.

The integration of workflows, business process management, and content rendering within a single platform has also streamlined digital operations, representing a significant improvement over the company’s previous multi-server setup.

This shift allows Sargento to focus more on delivering value-driven solutions for users rather than spending time on system maintenance.

Transitioning to User Experience and Benefits

CARA’s straightforward configurability translates directly into a positive user experience. The system’s intuitive design requires minimal training, even for those who do not work primarily in IT. Sowmya Alluri stated; “A short 15-minute training video was sufficient to get users up to speed.”

CARA’s user-friendliness and performance is evident in the minimal number of issues reported by employees. Sowmya Alluri added “I can count on my fingers how many issues users have come to me with over the last nine years working with CARA.”

Beyond its user-friendly design, CARA offers advanced features that enhance efficiency through automated workflows and support compliance efforts. Features like granular version control, content lifecycle management, and workflow automation empower users to effectively manage compliance-related content.

Additionally, CARA simplifies audit preparation with automated processes such as e-signatures, timestamps, and audit trails, ensuring the traceability and documentation required to demonstrate compliance confidently.

Future Plans

With over 10 years of successful collaboration, Sargento values its partnership with Generis and seeks to further enhance its processes with the CARA Platform. Looking ahead, Sargento is exploring the potential of AI and automation to further streamline and optimise operations. Working together, Generis and Sargento can leverage technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness across the family-owned company that was founded in 1953.