The Background: A Leading Provider of Potatoes

Since its founding in 1970 as a small, family-owned and operated business in Sacramento, Pennsylvania, Sterman Masser has grown into one of the nation’s largest foodservice operations. As a leading provider of potatoes for over 8 generations, Sterman Masser employs approximately 300 people, including legacy families, in agricultural, packaging, logistics, sales, and customer service positions.

With farming operations expanding across 4,600 total acres of crops including potatoes, cash grain, and hay, Sterman Masser’s warehouse operations pack and distribute over 250 million pounds of potatoes each year. In addition to its farming operations, Sterman Masser works closely with customers to help apply packaging best practices to private label brands and allows them to pack potatoes and onions under the brand names of some of the largest and most prestigious retailers and foodservice operators in the country. Because of its longstanding history, Sterman Masser has built a solid reputation and strong relationships in the industry.

The Challenge: Inefficiencies in Manual Processes

While the Masser family and their employees are experts in delivering quality potatoes, their management team identified the need to enhance operations in several other areas.

The process of administering disciplinary actions was entirely manual. Not only did it involve manual spreadsheets and handwritten notes taken by management, documents necessary for compliance were easily misplaced. The ability to ensure the company’s large fleet of drivers all followed best practices was becoming a challenge—especially during times of high product demand, such as the holiday season, when staff had less bandwidth to complete time-consuming HR tasks.

The company also sought a solution that could deliver valuable insights and information to drivers in the field. Because their fleet of drivers are a distributed workforce and on the go, there was no central place to keep the necessary information. To meet the increasing demands of the industry and to streamline HR processes, Sterman Masser turned to Pulpstream, an innovative business process management (BPM) platform.

The Solution: HR Process Automation

Pulpstream’s HR process automation was the solution Sterman Masser needed to improve their disciplinary processes. Empowering Sterman Masser to automate, Pulpstream began digitizing the company’s existing manual, paper-driven processes. Because the Pulpstream platform is no-code, Sterman Masser’s processes were easily customized to fit their specific needs.

To solve Sterman Masser’s fleet issues, Pulpstream created an easy-to-integrate solution that:

• Acts as a central hub for crucial data and information
• Generates built-in customizable reports for management
• Documents processes for consistency and traceability
• Optimizes workflows by tracking tasks and responsibilities
• Reduces time and efforts spent on manual processes
• Delivers communications to drivers via SMS
• Provides employee training on key processes

The Benefits: An Improved Employee Experience

Soon after deployment, there was clear and immediate success with driver disciplinary processes. Driven by this, Sterman Masser chose to expand their Pulpstream platform to include automation of employee training processes.

Choosing to integrate Pulpsteam’s platform has enabled Sterman Masser to realize the benefits of:

●      Adaptability: The customizable, no-code workflow platform has empowered Sterman Masser’s business process owner to design and manage key elements, taking customization to the next level.

●      Efficiency: Training and disciplinary processes have greatly been streamlined through the power of automation.

●      Consistency: By organizing information in a central hub, management has been able to identify missing steps in their processes and create a complete, effective, and positive experience for across-the-board training and disciplinary actions. Everyone in the organization can now access the useful information anytime, anywhere, creating transparency throughout the company.

●      Communication: Management can automate real-time reminders to employees for training or disciplinary steps, allowing them to proactively address issues as they arise. They can also send messages of encouragement, achievement and empowerment to improve employee satisfaction and morale.

Ultimately, Sterman Masser’s implementation of the Pulpstream platform has created more consistent and effective disciplinary and training processes, enhancing the transparency and communication with employees. The continued partnership with Pulpstream has helped the major foodservice operation realize substantial time savings for HR, allowing management to focus valuable efforts on high level tasks and operations.

Want to learn how you can have your own Pulpstream success story? Contact our team for a demo to see how Pulpstream can customize a digital solution for your company.

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