Land O’Lakes Industry Lecture: Department of Computer Science

Virtual Link

Speaker: Gary Hicks (Land O’Lakes Ag Retail IT Solutions Director)

Title: Land O’Lakes Technology Foodservice Bid Optimization Model (Technology Partnership: Computer Science + Data Science + Business Analytics)

Abstract: Land O’Lakes is an agri-business cooperative that leads with Technology products/services to best serve our members/owners and customers. We’ve recently completed a digital transformation to move from a project/services model to a product team/agile model. This transformation enables us to be more successful in meeting our member’s/owner’s digital needs and in adding value to our businesses. This transformation to align our Technology services most efficiently to business value has been especially important in our Dairy businesses. These businesses face significant opportunities and challenges when it comes to dynamically pricing our key products to maximize margins while also maximizing our bid “wins”. We’ll discuss a specific project, our Foodservice Bid Optimization Model, which demonstrates this business value. This project is a collaborative effort between our computer scientists/developers, data scientists, and business analysts. We’ll demonstrate how this collaboration and collective expertise is adding significant value to our Dairy business.