Dawn Foods Shares B2B Tips for Accelerating Digital Transformation

Dawn Foods, a global bakery manufacturer and ingredients supplier, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Over the last century, the Dawn Foods has adapted to meet shifting markets and consumer behaviors with success.

Gireesh Sahukar, senior director of digital technology at Dawn Digital Innovation Hub, spoke with us to share his tips for meeting modern business-to-business (B2B) demands and about his team’s experience with Salsify.

What was your team’s initial daily challenge with product information and the Dawn website?

Dawn Foods is a global manufacturer and ingredients supplier that has served bakers for 100 years. As the baking industry tends to use traditional sales methods, the digital team at Dawn first worked to establish an online product catalog.

With the launch of Dawn’s new ecommerce platform on July 1, existing retail bakery customers can now explore all of its products and find inspiration and insights to help grow their business.  

What was it about the Salsify platform that intrigued you and your team?

Using Salsify as the product information management (PIM) system enabled various team members — from digital to legal and marketing — to all add and manage information about Dawn products. This service makes it easy to gather and distribute product information to our website and digital catalogs.

We partnered with the Salsify team to assemble the product catalog and cleanse data received from various sources.

What have been the quick wins thus far with Salsify?

One of the best quick wins was when Salsify created rules to convert our traditional manufacturing naming conventions to ecommerce-friendly values. This improved our search capabilities and reduced unintentional data mishaps.

We were able to load our data and have a functioning catalog within weeks of starting the program.

Do you have plans to expand your Salsify efforts to other parts of the Dawn business or into new use cases?

Our Dawn digital team is actively developing product relationships, enhancing the quality of the product information, and enriching data from external sources. We do envision a continued relationship with Salsify as we do future integrations to bring in valuable data that our customers are looking for.

Dawn has gone through a rapid acceleration in digital transformation over the past couple of years, particularly when it comes to ecommerce. What would you recommend to other B2B businesses looking to do the same?

Our new online ordering platform is one of the many ways Dawn continues to progress on its digital journey and to develop innovative solutions for its customers’ needs. A simple, functional, and intuitive design to create a friendly user experience that allows your customer to transition from traditional commerce to a digital one.

This year, Dawn is celebrating our 100th birthday, marking a century of innovation and providing the highest quality products to our customers and consumers across the globe.

As we look to the next 100 years, we will continue to evolve our business to meet the changing needs and expectations of our customers, consumers, and our team members. Through this shift, we will strengthen our relationships with our customers as well as consumers — who are critical to driving this growth.

What are you most looking forward to in Dawn’s ecommerce roadmap over the next 1 to 2 years?

Our customers remain at the center of everything we do. Beyond this year, we will continue to elevate our service offerings and capabilities to address their needs — and in return, we’ll help them meet the needs of their consumers.

This transformation represents a new Dawn and an exciting cornerstone in our company’s history — one with tremendous areas of opportunity, for both our customers as well as Dawn team members.

What would you say is the biggest opportunity for B2B brands exploring modernizing their ecommerce tech stacks?

The opportunity for B2B brands — manufacturers and distributors alike — to connect with their customers and end-users, learning their behaviors, and getting direct feedback, is all feasible with the options available today.

The investment brings valuable data, insights, and understanding to your organization. Adopting modern technologies like microservices and single-page application frameworks allows the B2B brands to build compelling experiences while bolting them onto their existing systems and business processes.