Embracing tech can transform a small biz

How King’s Hawaiian grew into a powerhouse

So, there I was at Sapphire Now, the annual giant event for the technology company SAP, feeling a bit like a fish out of water.

Now, don’t get me wrong; the event was amazing. Interesting speakers, valuable panels, cool products, amazing entertainment (private Justin Timberlake concert, anyone?). And SAP itself is one of those big companies I love because not only do they take great care of their bread-and-butter enterprise clients (with service, products, etc.), but they also create intuitive tools for small businesses, too.

But the fish out of water moment came as I was interviewing one of SAP’s customers. He said to me, “Well, we consider a small business to be anything less than 1,000 employees.”

Flippity flop. Gasp for air. Pop my gills. Where’s that water?

No one in my small-business universe would consider 1,000 employees “small.”

But then, thankfully, I met Luis Cupajita, smart and charming senior vice president for IT for King’s Hawaiian, and all was right with the world.

You know King’s Hawaiian, right? I recall going to a family Thanksgiving dinner a few years back, and my aunt would not start the meal because someone had brought the wrong dinner rolls. King’s Hawaiian dinner rolls were the family tradition.

King’s Hawaiian started in 1950 as a small, family-run business in Hilo, Hawaii. It grew slowly at first but recently has grown more quickly due to its great products, “culture of aloha” (respect, dignity, excellence), passionate customers and now, technology.

King’s Hawaiian grew bigger, and so can you. Here’s how:

As befits a company that began as far west as you can in the U.S., King’s Hawaiian first became a favorite of tourists visiting the islands. Due to increased demand, in the 1970s the company started baking and selling in California, slowly heading east. By 2012, East Coast demand had finally begun to outstrip West Coast demand.

According to Cupajita, what enabled King’s Hawaiian to grow and become an international brand is technology — the secret sauce.

Specifically, Cupajita employed SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning software, a suite of tools that allows a business to collect, store and manage data. These tools allowed him to create processes that were reliable and repeatable.

“Having the right technology provides a small business with the ability to scale,” Cupajita told me.

“By not being tech-phobic, by embracing all of the different tech tools that are out there today, especially all of the amazing apps and software being made with small businesses specifically in mind, you can direct your vision to where you are going instead of where you have been.”

For King’s Hawaiian, deploying the right software meant initial 27% growth year-over-year, and more than that since.

So many small businesses are like King’s Hawaiian used to be — legacy companies with a “This is how we have always done things” mentality. But technology creates so many more options now, better and faster ways of doing things.

In the case of King’s Hawaiian, by embracing technology, it has been able to bake and ship fresh bread anywhere in the U.S. or the world.

Steve Strauss, @Steve Strauss on Twitter, is a lawyer specializing in small business and entrepreneurship and has been writing for USATODAY .com for 20 years. Email: sstrauss@mrallbiz.com. You can learn more about Steve at MrAllBiz.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.