Organizational growth can sometimes lead to IT slowdowns. That’s what happened when two leading Brazilian food companies merged in 2012. The newly formed company, BRF (formerly Brasil Foods), was the seventh-largest food company in the world and Brazil’s market leader, and partly because of its size it now faced a costly problem.

BRF serves global superstore chains such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, as well as supermarkets, wholesalers, food-service operations and family-owned bodegas, and its SAP system was being hit with 20,000 to 25,000 pricing requests daily. However, it took 17 days to make price changes, which isn’t ideal for a business that sells perishable commodities.

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