About the Presentation

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.

About Our Speaker

Gary graduated from Iowa State University in 1987 with a BS degree in Computer Science and minors in Business & Meteorology. Gary spent the majority of his career working for Cargill, Incorporated in multiple businesses and technology leadership positions. His main areas of focus at Cargill were in their Grain & Oilseeds Processing, Ag Retail and Animal Nutrition businesses. Gary retired from Cargill in 2018. Gary then spent one year working as the Vice President of Application Development for Long Term Care Group (LTCG), a leader in the long-term care 3 rd -party administration business. Gary currently works for Land O’Lakes as a Director in their Ag Retail IT Solutions Team. In this role, Gary leads a team working directly with Land O’Lakes Ag Retail and Cooperative members/owners to help develop and strengthen their Technology and IT capabilities. Throughout his time at Cargill and Land O’Lakes, it’s been a passion of Gary’s to stay connected with Iowa State University. Gary has acted as IT Recruiting Lead at Iowa State for both Cargill and Land O’ Lakes. Gary currently acts as Land O’Lakes’ IT Recruiting Partner Lead at Iowa State.