Compana Pet Brands’ cloud upgrade demonstrates the power of partnership

Originally founded as Manna Pro in 1985 with roots dating back to 1842, Compana Pet Brands has been committed to providing high-quality, nutritionally wholesome animal feeds, supplements, and treats. Based in Chesterfield, Missouri, they serve various animal markets, including dogs and cats, horses, and other backyard pets.

Compana’s mission to “nurture what you love” extends beyond pets to people and the planet. Through responsible sourcing, eco-friendly packaging, greener operations, and community outreach initiatives, the company is building a more sustainable future for all.

With a portfolio spanning over 15 acquired brands, a global workforce of 800+ employees, and a wide product range, Compana Pet Brands operates in a highly dynamic and fragmented market. Its aggressive growth through innovation, omnichannel retail expansion, and direct-to-consumer strategies introduced significant operational complexity. To maintain its leadership position and continue delivering on its mission to enrich the lives of pets and their families, Compana Pet Brands operations rely on a robust, scalable ERP solution so the company embarked on a cloud upgrade.

Since 2016, SAP has been at the heart of their enterprise processes, powering everything from finance and procurement to supply chain and manufacturing.

“SAP is a core partner with our organization. Our SAP ERP connects departments, drives real-time decision-making, and supports end-to-end processes that keep our business running smoothly. An efficient and reliable SAP environment isn’t just a convenience—it’s table stakes for us” says Pete Hogan, Sr. Vice President of IT for Compana Pet Brands.

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Cloud upgrade: 3 guiding principles

With experience spanning 14 ERP integrations, migrations, and upgrades across various platforms, Hogan brings a deep understanding of what it takes to execute them successfully and without business disruption.

Most recently, he led a cloud upgrade on RISE with SAP for SAP S4/HANA from version 2020 to 2023. Compana Pet Brands selected Hitachi as an integration partner and once the agreement was finalized, it only took a month for SAP to provision a sandbox environment. The transition from sandbox setup to go-live was completed in just 3.5 months.

His approach is grounded in a set of guiding principles designed to ensure smooth and reliable upgrades:

1. Strong internal leadership & executive sponsorship. Assigning a capable internal lead provides focus, accountability, and seamless coordination across teams. Involving senior leaders ensures timely decision-making and immediate escalation paths when needed.
2. Experienced partner support & robust support structure. Comprehensive support agreements with all vendors and partners must be secured well ahead of go-live, ensuring rapid response capabilities. Additionally, this type of project requires a robust contact network to provide critical coverage during high-risk periods, such as weekends. In this instance, partnering with Hitachi brought invaluable expertise in SAP upgrades, enabling the team to proactively identify and resolve issues before they could impact timelines.
3. Pre-production practice runs & expanded test coverages. The upgrade was executed three times in test environments. This repetition helps teams refine processes and address issues early. By leveraging existing SAP test cases and building new ones, test coverage increased by 25%. Final validation included plant-level operations like printing and scanning. Using advanced tools, the upgrade team resolved 100% of known code issues before go-live, significantly reducing the risk of post-upgrade disruptions.

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Collaboration + communication

Beyond these principles, fostering strong collaboration and maintaining open, ongoing communication proved essential in aligning expectations across internal teams and partners during the cloud upgrade.

“Everyone demonstrated exceptional professionalism, deep technical expertise, and a proactive approach across every phase of the project. The collaboration was instrumental in minimizing risk, maintaining stability, and delivering the upgrade on time and with precision,” Hogan says.

Tony Collura, VP North America South Region at SAP, says, “What truly made it successful was the close, collaborative partnership with the Compana Pet Brands team.  By working as one team, we were able to minimize business disruption and deliver a future-ready SAP landscape.”

While a cloud-to-cloud upgrade may seem straightforward on the surface, true success hinges on meticulous planning, thorough testing, and transparent communication.

For Compana Pet Brands, this approach translated into a dramatic reduction in time, cost, and complexity compared to traditional ERP upgrades.

More than just achieving a stable transition, they’ve positioned themselves for long-term agility and innovation—building a foundation that supports both current operations and future growth to continue “nurture what you love.”