How Cal-Maine Foods Built 53 Applications Without Code to Automate and Streamline Operations

Using Jitterbit’s low-code application development platform, Cal-Maine increased organizational automation, reduced manual processes, and scaled their operations.

Challenge

With limited IT resources and outdated technology, Cal-Maine was struggling to build apps to automate critical processes

Cal-Maine, the largest producer and distributor of shell eggs in the United States, was struggling to develop business apps needed to automate and optimize organizational processes.

Between leveraging an ASP Code Generator that was no longer being supported, running multiple manual processes across Excel and legacy databases, and building out apps in HTML and SQL, their small IT team was battling against time-consuming, error-prone data entry and inflexible technology.

With limited time, soon-to-be outdated resources, and a growing list of application and automation needs, the Cal-Maine team knew they needed to upgrade, simplify, and democratize application building to operate efficiently and scale.

Solution

After seeing Jitterbit’s low-code application development platform, there were “no other options”

Cal-Maine’s Manager of Development & Programming, Teresa Wheeler, says her former boss first saw Jitterbit’s low-code application development platform, Vinyl, and knew immediately it was the solution they’d been looking for.

“When he saw Vinyl, they didn’t even look at other options. He knew that is what they needed,” said Teresa.

Leveraging the intuitive, code-free interface, Teresa and her team (of just three developers!) have built and deployed 53 business applications, for internal and external use, with more than 75 total users, and 9+ integrations to internal systems, external APIs, and SQL databases. Each application took between one week and one month to build.

Key apps include:

• Payroll App: Looks at payroll info in the cloud and determines if an employee is active or not (via an integration with their active employee directory). If active, it forwards the account to payroll via email. It’s used in onboarding and offboarding, for auditing purposes, and to keep track of current users and their access.
• Cash App: Enables different company locations to go into the app, view check numbers and ACH documents, and match the accounts receivables to the correct locations. It replaces email threads with Accounts Payable and creates accounting journal entries as needed.
• Grocery Chain App: Enables grocery clients to go on the app, select their location and quantity, and order eggs for themselves. Before this, orders were faxed or emailed.
• Intercompany App: Allows different internal locations to put in inventory requests, automatically creating an order in their ERP. It also processes payments, generates reports, and records weekly KPIs that are exported to an Excel spreadsheet and used in their weekly conference calls.

Outcome

Organizational automation, less stress on IT, 4X faster app development, and seamless workflows

More than five years, 50 apps, and 9+ integrations later, Cal-Maine has completely transformed operational efficiency and increased organizational automation by simplifying their app-building process.

They have also greatly reduced manual efforts and human error (the intercompany app alone eliminates four hours of weekly data entry). By automating and better controlling when to pull data, they have also been able to control and reduce external API costs.

Not only are their development processes four times faster than before, they can also more easily tweak applications, translate data into a more consumable format for users, and enable people who aren’t familiar with programming to build apps.

Cal-Maine has plans to develop even more applications with Jitterbit’s low-code app development platform. “Our users know apps can be built faster, so there are many more requests for various apps. We’re always working on something,” said Teresa.

“Honestly, through 38 years in this industry, [Jitterbit] was the most successful contract of any company that I’ve ever experienced.”
– Teresa Wheeler, Manager of Development & Programming; Database Administrator & Developer