Nutrien Procurement Transformation

Between 2018 and 2020, following the merger of equals between Agrium and PotashCorp, Nutrien faced the work behind the headline: integrating operations across North America. Within Procurement, the mandate was to align three distinct organizations, Agrium, Crop Production Services, and PotashCorp, onto a single suite of policies and technologies, and to deliver the synergistic savings promised to investors.

The transformation touched more than 20,000 employees and introduced a new procurement ecosystem that included Ariba (guided buying), Amazon Business, SAP S/4HANA, and a new Card and Expense Management system. The scale of the technology change was significant. Ensuring adoption across a highly distributed workforce was the real test.

Procurement’s first phase of the Ariba rollout had already exposed the risks. An established vendor delivered a standardized “change-in-a-box” program that moved quickly but failed to meet business objectives, leaving users with new tools and limited clarity on how or when to use them.

Culturally, the organization was under intense pressure to move at “lightning speed,” creating resistance to the time required for meaningful user research. Logistically, procurement communications were fragmented across more than 50 decentralized SharePoint sites, where information was duplicated, outdated, or difficult to find. At the same time, the internal transformation team, made up of more than 200 seconded employees, was buffered from the “raw users” in the field. This created a real risk that new systems and guidance would be designed around program assumptions rather than the reality of rural branch operations.

zu replaced the standardized rollout approach with a user-centred design and Design Thinking process that treated adoption as the primary outcome. The team pushed beyond the transformation layer to engage raw users directly through interviews and site tours, including visits to rural Saskatchewan branches. These observations grounded the work in how procurement actually happened on the ground and revealed gaps between corporate intent and daily practice.

To rebuild trust in information, we audited the existing SharePoint ecosystem and consolidated it into a single, trusted SharePoint Hub. A unified information architecture and clear page patterns for high-use topics such as Expense Reporting and Rollout Schedules made guidance easier to find, easier to maintain, and easier to keep current as the program evolved.

To reduce complexity across multiple buying tools, zu created SmartBuy, a plain-language brand for “how buying works now.” A Buying Guide decision-tree placemat gave employees a fast, practical reference for choosing between Ariba, a P-Card, or S/4HANA in the moment. Physical promotional packages, including coffee kits, playing cards, RFID wallets, and reference magnets, helped make the change tangible and memorable across teams.

Sustained adoption was supported through structured change management using the ADKAR model, with Change Impact Surveys sent 2 to 4 weeks post-rollout to capture feedback and refine communications in real time. This human-centred approach streamlined procurement communications and enabled successful adoption across the newly merged enterprise, unlocking more than $1.0M in savings.