From Flour to Flow: How King Arthur Baking Company Crafted a Modern Omnichannel Recipe on SAP

King Arthur Baking Company’s (KAB’s) roots date back to 1790, and for a company with such a legacy, it offers an experience steeped in trust and quality. The Vermont-headquartered company’s operational complexity is as rich as its history, spanning B2B wholesale, direct-to-consumer eCommerce, catalogs, retail stores, baking schools, and even a bakery and café in Vermont.

On its journey to becoming the number 1 flour brand in the U.S., King Arthur recognized that its homegrown legacy systems were a roadblock to future growth. Therefore, KAB wanted to unify its multifaceted business on SAP S/4HANA to deliver one seamless brand experience.  As Vice President of Information Technology David Wren put it, “Customers don’t experience your channels. They experience your brand.”

A Recipe for Success

To turn that vision into reality, KAB needed a key ingredient to layer on top of its new SAP S/4HANA foundation: DataXstream’s OMS+. The company recognized that to create a truly central lens for customer service, it needed more omnichannel power than a native SAP ecosystem could offer. The flexible architecture of OMS+ was a game-changer, enabling rapid integration with essential third-party services  for payments, promotions, shipping/logistics, and loyalty.

The impact was immediate and transformative. OMS+ became the central hub, giving service agents a true 360-degree view of every customer interaction, regardless of the channel. The results speak for themselves:

• Radical efficiency: By creating configurable, role-based screens, OMS+ simplified workflows for vastly different teams. This resulted in a 25% reduction in clicks for primary tasks, which in turn reduced call times and made complex wholesale order processing easier.
• Rapid onboarding: During the peak holiday season, the company relies on temporary staff. The intuitive interface of OMS+ helped cut new-hire training time by 25%.
• Enhanced service: With real-time inventory data and integrated loyalty program information, call center agents can now provide smarter, more personalized service, from checking a customer’s loyalty points to accessing their complete order history instantly.

King Arthur Baking’s long-standing values guide them to always put bakers first. By integrating every aspect of their business — from baking schools to retail — into a modern digital architecture, they’re blending heritage with innovation to serve today’s bakers in smarter, more connected ways. Read the full case study here.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

King Arthur Baking’s case highlights some key learnings for SAPinsiders who want a business-led transformation supported by a clean, core SAP strategy.

1. Embrace extensibility to keep the core clean. A pre-integrated, certified solution like OMS+ is a powerful way to enhance SAP S/4HANA capabilities without incurring the technical debt associated with heavy, in-app customization. For years, the SAP world has struggled with monolithic systems where custom code made every upgrade a risky, multi-year project. KAB’s approach demonstrates the modern paradigm of maintaining the SAP S/4HANA core standard to leverage SAP’s innovation and handling specialized, fast-moving processes in an adjacent application. A clean core strategy simplifies future upgrades, lowers the total cost of ownership, and de-risks the SAP S/4HANA migration by separating concerns. It ensures long-term agility, allowing the business to adapt without constantly modifying its foundational ERP.
2. Your SAP ecosystem is more than just SAP. As KAB’s case highlights, modern digital commerce is a complex and interconnected ecosystem of specialized services. DataXstream’s OMS+ acts as the integration hub, utilizing its API-friendly architecture to connect SAP S/4HANA with KAB’s chosen non-SAP digital platforms, such as Braintree, Talon.One, Zinrelo, and Shipper HQ. This agility means the business can select the best tool for each job and swap them out as needed, future-proofing its technology stack without disrupting core financial and supply chain processes in SAP.
3. A superior UX delivers hard, measurable ROI. Investing in a user experience (UX) layer in conjunction with SAP drives tangible business outcomes. Thus, for KAB, a 25% reduction in clicks translates to a lower Average Handle Time (AHT) in the call center, resulting in reduced customer wait times and labor costs. Similarly, cutting new-hire training time by 25% is a game-changer for businesses that rely on seasonal staff, as temporary employees become productive almost immediately, maximizing their impact during the critical holiday sales spike. This proves that a simplified, role-based interface empowers employees, reduces operational friction, and funds its investment through efficiency gains.