Technology executives from global foodservice leader Sysco visit innovation centre in Sri Lanka

Sysco Corporation (the leading global foodservice distribution company, announced that two of the company’s executives, including its executive vice president and chief technology officer, Wayne Shurts, visited the Sysco LABS team in Colombo. 

Sysco LABS is Sysco’s innovation team, leveraging agile and design thinking to reimagine the customer experience, with team members in Redwood City, California, Austin and Houston, Texas, and its core engineering team in Colombo. Shurts and Sysco’s vice president of business technology, Americas, Wesley Story, were in Colombo to discuss Sysco’s business strategy and collaborate with the local Sysco LABS’ team on the cutting edge work taking place. 

Sysco supplies close to half a million customer locations across the globe, with a team that is over 65,000 strong. In order to accomplish this feat, it employs technology in everything it does, including the sourcing of products, storing and managing them in digitally catalogued temperature-controlled warehouses, calculating price and availability and coordinating orders, deliveries and reporting. Sysco is able to reliably supply hundreds of thousands of customers with products and services that their businesses depend on, because of technology. Together, the Sysco business technology (BT) team and the Sysco LABS team are looking at this technology stack, and how it can be innovated to streamline Sysco’s business even further. 

“Sysco’s business technology team and Sysco LABS are innovation partners, utilising deep customer insights, cross-functional engagement and agile, rapid design to develop the foodservice industry’s leading technology,” said Shurts. “We are excited to be in Colombo to support the team, as we work together to enrich our customers’ experience.” 

Sysco BT and Sysco LABS work very closely together, often with Sysco LABS delivering new customer facing technology, which is integrated with the core Sysco systems that BT supports on the backend. In addition, Sysco has a “BT Studio” team at the Sysco LABS innovation centre in Sri Lanka. BT Studio associates are key members of BT Agile teams who work in all areas of Sysco’s business technology.

Expanding on Sysco LABS’ innovation within Sysco’s core technology, Story said, “We are getting tremendous value from our Sysco LABS team in Sri Lanka across a number of key areas. For example, this team plays a critical part in our e-commerce efforts, pricing and rebate management systems, public cloud platform, as well as software engineering innovation in support of our legacy modernisation strategy.”

Sysco LABS Managing Director and Senior Vice President of Engineering Shanil Fernando said, “The opportunity in front of us is unlike any other the world over. Food is one of the world’s largest industries, and Sysco is the industry leader in foodservice. When you combine that with our leading-edge tech and the culture of innovation we have fostered, you can expect to continue to see great things from Sysco and Sysco LABS.” 

Sysco’s development of the Sysco LABS’ Sri Lankan team stands as yet another example of the expansion of Sri Lanka’s tech sector. Along with the launch of the ‘Island of Ingenuity’, the national tech brand for Sri Lanka, the industries of technology and innovation are fast becoming one of the largest contributors to the country’s global footprint. More details about Sysco LABS and the work they are doing can be found at syscolabs.lk. 

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