From the day it was founded in 1957, The Honey Baked Ham Company has had the recipe for success.

Founder Harry J. Hoenselaar had it when he cured and glazed his first ham joints; his children and grandchildren have never lost it, overseeing the huge growth of a company that is something of an American institution.

HoneyBaked is now embarking on a transformation journey that will see it finding new recipes for success, while keeping a tight hold on the original.

It is a balancing act – digital transformation and doubling the size of the business on one side, with tradition and familiarity on the other.

One of the senior leaders charged with making the journey seamless is HoneyBaked’s Chief Transformation Officer Darin Morrow.

A force to be reckoned with

Darin started his career in the US Air Force 40 years ago. Between active duty and reserves, his tech journey included software engineering, object-oriented design and programming, missile defense systems, and several years in the area of technical intelligence.

Having retired from the AF Reserves as a Master Cyber Operations officer, his forces skills aligned with his commercial career.

While serving in the AF Reserves, Darin also spent 22 years at AT&T working on high volume and complex systems across several businesses.

The work was at the leading edge of technology and integration, from .COM and service-oriented architectures to highly integrated systems – including building what today is Cricket Wireless.

He also led technical integrations for mergers and acquisitions such as DirectTV and technology strategy for consumer and large business, and finally served as VP/CIO at Cricket Wireless. Leveraging that experience, Darin also teaches IT and Cybersecurity at Kennesaw State University.

Hope is not a strategy or a plan

Moving to HoneyBaked in August 2019, Darin faced the huge challenge of helping double the size of the business while implementing a digital transformation programme.

In order to face the challenges, he says there are a few foundations to put in place.

“Similar to all transformation roles, comprehending the complexities and uniqueness of the business is critical – not just being technically savvy.

“Finding the right solutions and technologies that fit the problem space and the culture of the company is key.”

Finally, he says: “Having the right strategy and tactical roadmap to achieve the transformation is critical. After all, hope is not a strategy or a plan.”

Driving change with everybody on board

When your job title is Chief Transformation Officer, you cannot hesitate when asked to lead both the business and technical transformation. Instead, it is the cue to have a plan and to deliver on it.

Darin says there are a number of essential elements:

• Understand the problem

“What problem are we trying to solve? What is the company’s strategy, what is the technology strategy and what are the priorities to get the company there on both fronts? Start with an end goal in mind.

“We’ve really stepped back and said: ‘What do we want to be, five, six, seven, eight years from now? What size company do we want to be? What is the infrastructure we need? What’s our omnichannel strategy? Who and what do our customers want? ”

• Get the tech right

“What technologies work well here, at what costs, and at what time (timing is really important)?  There are several good options, but what works best for your problem space and employee skills sets is important. Change management is critical – not just for the business but for the technology team.”

• Work together

“Education, collaboration and solutioning all require the business and technology teams work together. We work to partner across both our technology team and business teams at HoneyBaked; working cross-functionally to implement change. Many transformation efforts strive for that and I believe our team has been super successful at it.” 

How does that happen? At HoneyBaked, a transformation team was formed that included representation from each major business organisation and the members from the technology team. They work together with the broader business originations towards one goal.

Customer engagement is key

Darin knows that the goal of doubling the size of HoneyBaked is a futile one if the business ceases to engage its customers. If the customers do not want to grow with us, all bets are off.

He says: “The goal of the company is to double its size over the next few years, but at the same time we want to engage customers and provide the best experience every day, not just at the holidays.

“We want to continue the Honey Baked tradition of providing premium, quality products that make meals memorable – at the holidays and every day.”

Getting technology baked in

The strategy to engage customers has many aspects, some of which will be possible thanks to efforts to enable infrastructure on the cloud, secure data and platforms, while merging in artificial intelligence.

Darin says: “We want to engage our customers how they want to be engaged and when. We want to target new consumers through different channels and technology, new delivery models, new in store experience, new web experience and more.”

He adds: “We have focused on our omni-channel strategy by working through customer segments, mastering our customer data, detailing our customer journeys and consolidating and streamlining our digital experience.

“When we started, we were a bit disparate between our stores and direct-to-consumer businesses. Even our 3P and catering were separate in the view of our customers.

“We have pulled all that together and we truly have a single digital front end to our customers that is getting better every year.”

He highlights the company’s ‘Buy Online and Pick up in Store’ campaign as “critical to making our digital channel the new front door to the store”.

Darin adds: “Not only that, but we have been remodelling our stores to make them more modern and easier for our customers to engage with us.”

Finally, in the holiday of 2022, HoneyBaked launched its loyalty programme. “We have been able to really focus on our loyal customers and delivering delicious distinctive quality products,” Darin says.

Pieces of the internal digital transformation puzzle

Internally, like a lot of companies that grew from small to medium via consolidation, business processes and automation are key.

They include identifying technical debt, manual processes and processes that needed to change.

Darin says: “We recently replaced our ERP that had been working the same way for 15 years. We brought streamlined process and automation and established the ERP foundation in the first phase with treasury automation, integration of invoicing and our warehouse management system, as well as electronic data interchange (EDI).”

The next phase will “really focus on integrating all of our purchase orders and inventory so we can efficiently and effectively manage our business and once again remove manual processes”.

Praise for key partners

At any level of the business world, no company is an island – partners are both crucial and warmly appreciated. The key companies helping Honey Baked Ham’s transformation journey include:

FOR OMNICHANNEL

Material+

In terms of omnichannel, Material+ helped us with our customer segmentation efforts and helped us comprehend who our customers are and who our customers could be.

Jabian Consulting

Additionally, Jabian Consulting helped HoneyBaked define its customer journeys and omni-strategy including its call-centre strategy.

Slalom Consulting

Darin says: “To be omnichannel, the first thing we had to do is consolidate and streamline our digital front end. Slalom Consulting helped us design our unified user interface/user experience (UI/UX).”

Microsoft Azure

Darin says: “Of course, we moved our digital platform completely to the cloud via Microsoft Azure and that has been extremely helpful in ensuring that our availability and security of the digital platform is premium.”

INTERNAL TRANSFORMATION

Sikich

Darin says: “Sikich and Microsoft are our lead partners on our enterprise transformation as we built our new ERP (Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations). Sikich helped our team lay out the phases for our enterprise transformation and were the lead in getting the first phase and foundation up and running.”

He adds: “Sikich was also instrumental in helping us with all the integrations to our ERP including: Scanco (Without Wire WMS), SK Global treasury automation and our electronic data interchange (EDI) provider SPS.

“With Sikich, we have done things at Honey Baked that have never been done before successfully. We continue to partner with Sikich on phase two with our store data and inventory efforts.”

So what is Darin’s definition of a successful result?

He says: “When customers can easily access our distinctive, delicious, quality products when and how they want — during the holidays and every day — that's when we know we've done our job right.”

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