Jeremy Mayfield, Director of IT at National Sugar Marketing Cooperative, took the company from a legacy on-premise ERP to a fully SaaS platform in under 12 months, against a 14-month board approval, after a year of defining requirements and a vendor hit list that ended with "now you have to show us." He explains why an organization that can't tell you its requirements isn't ready for change, and why he thinks that 18 months from now IT leaders will be talking about what he calls the death of the data center.
Jeremy Mayfield came out of school as a fresh engineer and fell into IT back when it was called MIS. As the only IT person at his first company, he taught himself everything, from Cat5 cables and phone-system punch-down blocks to databases, and at one point he was a SQL expert. A leader tapped him early, and he has spent most of his 30 years in IT in leadership while staying hands-on. In 1997 he ran a 3 meg internet link over a 17-mile wireless hop and negotiated free internet by letting the provider use the company's silo as a hop. At a global company of more than 90,000 people, he was a program owner for voice over IP and landline optimization across 1,600 North American locations, work that saved about $11 million in copper.
Today National Sugar, which distributes sugar to companies across the US, runs completely serverless and fully SaaS, with a zero trust framework in place of VPNs. Its new ERP went live on May 1 in under 12 months, against a 14-month board approval, and finished well under the approved budget. It started with a year of defining requirements, including visits to the co-op's members and to 3PLs. A roughly 90-page RFP went to about 10 vendors, Tier 1 and Tier 2, with a hit list every one of them had to answer: anyone who couldn't come back with "here's how we'll do it" was disqualified, and the finalists heard "now you have to show us." Jeremy wanted a vanilla, canned app, which he sums up as configuration over customization, and he phased the rollout to keep scope creep out.
National Sugar was formed from one of the co-op's members about 15 or 16 years ago, and that member was still running all of its IT, ERP hosting included, when Jeremy was hired and told, "your task is to modernize us." His first day on the job was the cutover from the member's Microsoft 365 tenant to National Sugar's own. He took a cautious approach to AI through the ERP project and the stabilization after go-live. Now, with shadow AI already in use across the company, he puts security first and has asked the CFO to realign the budget for business licenses the company can administer and secure. Asked what IT leaders will be talking about in 18 months, he picks the death of the data center, with data spread out like an atom, "all over the place but no place at the same time."
Key takeaways: Nail down your requirements before you shop. If the organization can't tell you what they are, it isn't ready for change; Build a hit list around what only your business needs, like FDA and USDA requirements and lot traceability for a food grade business, and disqualify any vendor that can't answer with "here's how we'll do it."; Make vendors show you before they get time with your leadership team; Choose configuration over customization: a vanilla app, with pre-built connectors for what sits around it; Phase the rollout, with the high-value, high-impact pieces first, and keep scope creep out; Budget a stabilization period after go-live. He planned about six months before turning to AI.
Chapters:
00:00 Cold open: not ready for change
00:43 Meet Jeremy Mayfield: the only IT person, self-taught
03:17 Still hands-on: a 17-mile wireless hop and $11 million in copper
11:54 Completely serverless, with zero trust instead of VPNs
13:57 SOC 2 and configuration over customization
18:32 Pre-built connectors, and an ERP live in under 12 months
20:59 How the co-op works, and a year of requirements
27:06 The hit list and "now show us"
30:37 Five ERP chan...
