Harmoniz Seeds: from fragmented processes to one source of truth
Harmoniz Seeds is an international plant breeding company focused on developing innovative vegetable varieties.
The merger of two organisations and strong international growth also made the organisation more complex. New projects, more customers, several locations and different departments put existing ways of working under increasing pressure.
What had worked for years was becoming harder and harder to scale. Information was scattered across systems, Excel files and departments. People worked hard, but it was getting more and more difficult to keep track of projects, responsibilities and progress. Together with Harmoniz Seeds, we set out to create structure, insight and scalability in their R&D and commercial processes.
Current situation
Harmoniz Seeds was in a phase of strong growth. At the same time, several teams had to work together on hundreds of ongoing breeding projects, many of which run for several years.
The organisation worked with different systems, including Phenome for recording R&D data, Priority as its ERP system and various Excel files that departments had built themselves.
Although a lot of data was being recorded, there was no central overview. R&D held most of the information about the projects. Sales had limited insight into the progress of breeding projects. Product Development worked from its own information needs. Management had no single central place where the status of projects, priorities, capacity and progress were visible.
The result was a situation in which plenty of information existed, but was hard to reach for the people who needed it to do their work well. Project information often had to be requested by hand. Status updates went through email, meetings or personal conversations. Much of the knowledge was stored in people's heads rather than in processes or systems.
Business challenge
The challenge did not arise because Harmoniz was not growing enough. It arose because the organisation was growing faster than its existing way of working could support.
The number of projects grew. The number of stakeholders grew. The dependencies between departments grew.
As a result, it became increasingly difficult to keep control of ongoing projects and of the collaboration between R&D, Product Development, Sales and Management. A lot of time was lost gathering information, aligning teams and following up processes by hand. At the same time, there was a growing need for more predictability towards customers. Sales wanted better insight into the status of projects. Management wanted to steer better on progress, capacity and priorities.
It became clear that further growth would only be possible if the underlying processes were better organised and supported.
Problems
The consequences became more and more visible in day-to-day work. There was no central overview of projects, statuses or priorities. Departments depended on each other to get information. Projects could fall behind without it being immediately clear where the cause lay.
Sales could not always give customers reliable expectations, because the information they needed was spread across different systems and departments.
Management had no real-time insight into the status of projects, capacity issues or possible bottlenecks. On top of that, the organisation still largely worked in ways that dated from before the growth and before the merger of the two organisations.
Many processes had never been explicitly defined. Responsibilities were not always clear. Handovers between departments often relied on unspoken agreements. This led to frustration, delays and inefficiency within the organisation.
Blind spot
At the start of the project, the problem seemed fairly clear. Harmoniz wanted more overview within its projects. It was looking for a way to make tasks, statuses and progress more visible. During the project, however, it turned out that the real issue went much deeper. The further we mapped the processes, the clearer it became that many of them had not yet been fully defined.
The organisation initially thought its processes were already known and mainly needed to be made more visible. In reality, much of the crucial process knowledge existed only implicitly, within departments and even with individual employees. Within R&D in particular, a large part of the operational knowledge turned out to be concentrated in one key person. This employee had built their own Excel files to keep processes manageable. As a result, much of the information about progress, status and ways of working was not visible to the rest of the organisation. Workshops and process analyses regularly led to discussions about responsibilities, process steps and handovers. Not because people disagreed, but because many agreements had never been written down.
It also turned out that large amounts of valuable data were being recorded in Phenome, but were not being used operationally to manage projects. In the end, the biggest discovery was that Harmoniz did not just have an overview problem. The organisation wanted to build on processes that had not yet been worked out well enough to support further growth.
Approach
The project did not start with software. It started with understanding. Through discovery sessions and conversations with stakeholders from different departments, we first mapped out the domain, the processes and the challenges in full. We then started on in-depth process mapping, analysing every step in the chain.
From request to breeding process. From R&D to Product Development. From handover to commercial follow-up.
Along the way, missing steps, missing data, unclear responsibilities and missing handover moments were brought to light.
Only once these foundations were in place did we start analysing the existing systems. The final solution was to create one central workspace in monday.com as the single source of truth for the organisation.
Phenome remained the specialist system for recording R&D data. Through connections and integrations, relevant information is automatically made available in monday.com.
Existing Excel processes were also integrated and made accessible to the whole organisation. In the new environment, the following happens automatically:
- Tasks are created
- Responsibilities are assigned
- Statuses are updated
- ETAs are calculated
- Notifications are sent
- Handovers between departments are started
- Dashboards are updated
A CRM environment was also set up, making sales activities, customer information and commercial insights available in one place. Every department has access to the information that is relevant to its work. This creates overview without unnecessary complexity.
Benefit
The biggest change showed in day-to-day work. Employees need to ask for information less often.
Less searching. Less waiting. Less dependence on other departments. Project information is available straight away. Responsibilities are clear. The next step in a process is visible.
This brings more calm to the organisation, and less frustration. Many questions that used to be asked by email, in meetings or in person can now be answered by employees themselves.
The administrative burden has also gone down. Automations take over recurring work, so less manual work is needed to keep projects on track. Every department has the right information to make decisions on its own.
Impact
The impact goes beyond operational efficiency. Harmoniz has laid a foundation that allows further growth without losing control.
Processes have been digitised and streamlined. Departments work from the same source of information. Responsibilities are explicitly defined. Handovers follow a clear structure. Management has real-time insight into projects, capacity and progress.
The dependence on individual employees has been greatly reduced. The risk of projects stalling or falling behind has gone down. Internal frustration has decreased. Customers also get more predictability and reliability. Where growth used to create more and more complexity, Harmoniz now has a scalable way of working that supports further growth.
Lessons learned
The most important lesson from this project was that the processes were less clear than first thought. Harmoniz initially believed it mainly needed more overview.
During the project it became clear that the underlying processes had to be made explicit first, before technology could support them effectively. It also showed how dependent the organisation had become on one key person within R&D.
It also became clear that every department needs different information to work successfully. The project showed that successful digitalisation does not start with software. It starts with understanding processes, responsibilities, handovers and information needs. Only when these foundations are clear can technology bring lasting improvement.
The key lesson for other plant breeding companies is therefore:
Growth does not expose the problems that will arise tomorrow. Growth exposes the problems that already exist today, but are not yet visible.
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