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Ninety-nine years ago, in the fertile valleys of western Colombia where sugar cane is plentiful, Don Hernando Caicedo imagined turning the colors, shapes, and flavors of tropical fruits into luscious hard and soft candy treats. 

His dream led to the founding of Colombina and to a colorful corporate logo inspired by a character from an Italian opera who swung on the moon. In the 1960s, his son, Don Jaime H. Caicedo, took over the company and drove a major transformation, diversifying its offerings and expanding sales abroad.

Expansion 

That early spirit of reinvention has continued to shape Colombina’s growth, turning a family-founded confectionery business into a diversified food company with international reach. Today, Colombina is a multinational leader in food production with a portfolio of 19 categories, including confectionery, cookies, chocolate, sauces, preserves, ice cream, and coffee, along with a global workforce of more than 8,000.  

From seven processing plants and 39 distribution centers in Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, and the U.S., Colombina serves 750,000 customers in more than 90 countries worldwide and generates annual sales of almost US$1 billion. 

But with a global footprint spanning manufacturing, distribution, and retail, the company had to continually review and adapt specialized technology solutions for each market segment.  

Colombina’s leadership recognized that this fragmented approach made it difficult to ensure the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of business information at scale, and that the company needed to standardize processes across dozens of markets while continuing to grow sales and manage costs. 

IT priorities 

Colombina identified key areas in need of standardization, particularly finance and supply chain management, and recognized that a unified technology foundation was critical to sustaining growth and operational efficiency.  Security also emerged as a top priority, shaping many of the technology decisions that would follow. 

To address these challenges, it embarked on a major transformation led by CIO Jesús Brand, a long-time ASUG Colombia chapter president and respected figure across the region. Colombina’s objective was to effectively use data to achieve its business goals faster and with less risk. 

By moving to the cloud, Colombina was seeking to streamline product planning, manufacturing operations and models, and quality management processes. It also focused on simplifying supply chain tasks, including inventory, warehousing, delivery and transportation, order promising, and logistics material identification.  

RISE with Â鶹ԭ´´ 

A long-term Â鶹ԭ´´ customer, Colombina signed up for RISE with Â鶹ԭ´´, migrating from Â鶹ԭ´´ ERP Central Component to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition in a full, simultaneous migration executed across 16 countries. The solution covers key business functions including finance, asset management, manufacturing, supply chain, and sales, but the company went a step further. 

To harmonize its operational data, Colombina integrated its cloud ERP with a broad ecosystem of Â鶹ԭ´´ solutions, including Â鶹ԭ´´ Fiori, Â鶹ԭ´´ SuccessFactors, Â鶹ԭ´´ Integrated Business Planning, Â鶹ԭ´´ Analytics Cloud, and Â鶹ԭ´´ Ariba, among others.  

At the same time, John Carlos Jaramillo, an IT project manager at Colombina for over 20 years, noted that governance and security were strengthened through Â鶹ԭ´´ Cloud Application Services, which helps run, manage, and continuously optimize the company’s expanded Â鶹ԭ´´ landscape. 

Jaramillo also highlighted the value derived from engaging with the Â鶹ԭ´´ Enterprise Architect, particularly through strategic advisory and guidance on adoption opportunities. He emphasized the benefit of gaining a clearer understanding of the contractual entitlements available to the organization, enabling more effective utilization of existing Â鶹ԭ´´Â investments and maximizing the value of their licensed capabilities. 

He also highlighted the guidance provided around key strategic initiatives, including clean core, helping drive a sustainable and extensible ERP landscape; Â鶹ԭ´´ Cloud ALM, enabling stronger operational visibility and application life cycle management practices; and Joule Base, supporting the exploration of AI-driven capabilities and accelerating the organization’s journey toward business innovation and increased user productivity. 

Security benefits 

Among the overall security benefits, the new system provides protection at different layers, including the operating system, applications, and users, while delivering low downtime and quick, thorough resolutions. Before implementation, system downtime was a significant issue for Colombina; now, with double the number of application servers, downtime has been reduced and most customer issues can be resolved within 45 minutes. 

Colombina’s IT team also reports high confidence when looking ahead to updates, with reduced concerns thanks to predictable update windows that typically take place at the weekend. In addition, the new system provides early watch alerts, enabling the IT team to get in front of potential risks on a day-to-day basis. Â鶹ԭ´´ for Me helps monitor and maintain the flow of these activities and gives a clear view of current infrastructure, operating system, activities, and risk profiles. 

Tangible results 

The impact has been tangible: Colombina now offers next-day delivery and has improved average customer response times by more than a third. Workload distribution has improved dramatically, while the business has seen fewer customer returns, stronger demand planning, and more efficient HR management. 

But the company is not stopping there. Having introduced Joule for Â鶹ԭ´´ SuccessFactors, Colombina is preparing to activate Joule Agents across its business and is implementing Â鶹ԭ´´Â Databricks for data models, working with Â鶹ԭ´´Â Business Data Cloud to build the right data foundation for future AI capabilities.