Use Case
Finding organizational and technological alignment by identifying and visualizing existing processes and systems, which helped create an AI framework that is being utilized to achieve business outcomes established by leadership.
Perdue's Chief Information Officer Mark Booth shared the organization's journey with capability mapping, which is helping them identify gaps in their digital footprint and break down silos.
Top Takeaways:
- Capability-First Digital Strategy: By mapping technology to specific business outcomes rather than individual software tools, Perdue successfully broke down departmental silos and unified a large-cap enterprise under a single "Unified Systems" framework.
- Tiered AI Integration: The organization maximized ROI by categorizing AI into three distinct layers—Associate, Embedded, and Custom—allowing them to prioritize high-value use cases that drive immediate productivity while building proprietary, long-term competitive advantages.
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The Strategic Imperative of Capability Mapping
Business capability mapping serves as the critical bridge between high-level strategy and day-to-day operations. For a $10 billion enterprise like Perdue, with 20,000 associates and complex logistics spanning 20 hatcheries, the primary challenge was organizational fragmentation. Chief Information Officer Mark Booth shared with us that the IT landscape was siloed by business entity, resulting in a decentralized digital footprint and a decades-old SAP system burdened by heavy customizations. Capability mapping was introduced not merely as a technical component, but as a business-outcome framework designed to visualize gaps across departments and break down these long-standing silos and gain efficiencies and unification in the process.
Initiating the Journey: Process Over Technology
The transformation began with a fundamental shift in perspective: reimagining IT and business as a conjoined effort rather than separate functions. Partnering with PwC, the leadership team launched a business process re-engineering plan. The success of this journey relied heavily on a "Unified Systems" philosophy, supported by executive sponsors and cross-functional drivers. A core guiding principle was established to prevent "reinventing the wheel"—if an existing system could sufficiently support a required business capability, the organization would stick with it, ensuring resources were focused on genuine innovation rather than redundant migrations.
Foundation and Taxonomy Normalization
The process plan matured from individual business unit maps into a centralized, consolidated strategy. To build a stable foundation, the team first aligned strategic goals and normalized taxonomies across the enterprise. This ensured that the components could cohesively come together before defining the role of emerging technologies like AI. By establishing these common grounds and platforms, Perdue could link capabilities (the desired business outcomes), across the two disparate business models, ensuring that a "delivery" or "procurement" capability meant the same thing in every corner of the company, and aiding in the prioritization to tackle the solutions that could be applied cross-functionally.
Mapping the Digital Footprint and Maturity
Once the foundation was set, the organization mapped its core and feeder systems to these capabilities. This involved creating heat maps to rate each capability by its technological support and maturity level, a visual instrument in determining AI readiness. Workshops were then utilized to perform deep dives into specific capabilities, where business teams decided whether to consolidate, unify, standardize, or automate processes. A dedicated Transformation Management Office (TMO) acted as the ultimate evaluator, vetting ideas against the strategic plan to ensure that every technical adjustment provided measurable business value.
“You have to think about the capabilities, not the systems, so that you can have an organized foundation for the AI initiatives and understand which would lead to maximum business value being delivered.”
— Mark Booth, CIO, Perdue Farms
Strategic AI Integration and Resource Evaluation
Rather than chasing AI tools in isolation, Perdue mapped its digital evolution by existing capability. This allowed for a pragmatic evaluation of internal resources: identifying if they had the personnel, tools, and infrastructure to support specific goals. This led to a structured, three-tier AI framework:
- Associate AI: Focused on individual productivity and virtual assistance.
- Embedded AI: Integrating intelligence into existing platforms like CRMs without custom development.
- Custom AI: Tailored, ground-up builds for specific needs, such as utilizing large language models (LLMs) for internal documentation. These often involve proprietary data, models, and workflows.
With the capability mapping anchors and this new tiered approach, Perdue could ensure that AI use cases were prioritized based on their ability to be scaled across multiple departments for maximum impact.
Source: Synthesized from Bridging Business, Technology, and AI with Capability Mapping, 2026.
Finance Department Capabilities
Through their multiple workshops, Perdue assessed where they could unify, consolidate, standardize, automate, or would need to develop a new solution. In the finance department, many of these were unifying records into data-focused functional reports with AI, using the AI tools that were then able to be embedded in or created for maximization of data impact in AI-created reports that were then able to be created from the cleaned and unified data.
“We want to use fewer systems, but we want to be sure to meet the business capabilities. This requires weighing the benefits of the platforms and consolidating at the capability platform.”
— Mark Booth, CIO, Perdue Farms
Example Mapping Framework from Perdue
Source: Synthesized from Bridging Business, Technology, and AI with Capability Mapping, 2026.
Supply Chain Optimizations
Supply chain optimization was the second process area that Perdue focused on to realize the capabilities and investigate the most optimal areas to target AI, particularly in “Inventory to Delivery” and “Order to Cash” buckets where custom AI was used to create optimization patterns and recognition.
Mark added the simplicity of tracking KPIs like on-time delivery and aid the tracking with visual tools.
For more visibility on the results, view Perdue’s Capability Map, developed from the project (for members only).
Measurable Impact and Future Expansion
The final stage of the capability mapping journey focuses on sustainability and ROI. By setting up systems to track KPIs, such as speed, accuracy, and on-time delivery, Perdue transitioned from subjective assessments to data-driven management. Visual tracking tools now allow leadership to see the tangible benefits of Associate and Embedded AI levels in real-time. Moving forward, the organization continues to expand its digital capabilities, using the established mapping anchors to ensure every new investment is perfectly synchronized with the overarching strategic goals of the enterprise.
Interested in Viewing More?
Listen to Mark discuss their business capability mapping journey in this on-demand session.
