For sixteen years, CROPS has been the silent workhorse behind CellMark’s global trade operations. It has managed contracts, tracked inventory, handled logistics, and kept financial transactions in check across multiple regions, serving diverse personas - from traders and supply chain managers to finance and compliance teams.

But time has a way of catching up with even the most reliable systems. What was once an enabler had become a constraint—rigid where flexibility was needed, slow where speed was essential, and difficult to change without unintended consequences. The challenge was clear: how do you modernize the backbone of a business without breaking it?

A High-Stakes Transformation

Unlike modern startups that build from scratch, CellMark faced a different reality - CROPS was too critical to risk a rip-and-replace approach. The system had accumulated 16 years of business logic, regional customizations, and deeply embedded workflows that couldn't simply be rebuilt overnight.

Instead of chasing cutting-edge for the sake of it, the team embraced a Gradual Readiness Approach, balancing modernization with business continuity. The goal:

• Keep core operations stable while progressively modernizing components

• Align the technical evolution with how the business actually operates

• Introduce new capabilities incrementally, learning and refining along the way

The Complexity Beneath the Surface

CROPS was not just one system. It was an intricate network of regional variations, customized workflows, and integrations with third-party services. Any change risked disrupting not just one business unit but an entire ecosystem.

The modernization effort required:

• Decoding legacy logic embedded deep within a Java (Struts 1.0) monolith with ExtJS, making enhancements slow and fragile.

• Overhauling financial workflows as CROPS 1.0 was built around Microsoft GP, and CROPS 2.0 will be fully driven by IFS—a fundamental shift in accounting integration, financial reconciliation, and transaction handling.

• Ensuring regional alignment while standardizing where possible, balancing customization with operational consistency across diverse business units.

• Upgrading inventory management to improve responsiveness and leverage data-driven decision-making for global supply chain operations.

• Addressing technical debt and risk as GO (Global Operations) reaches end-of-support, requiring a shift to a more maintainable architecture.

To navigate this complexity, AI became an unexpected ally. AI-assisted code understanding and documentation helped accelerate the process—transforming undocumented business logic into actionable insights, reducing dependencies on legacy knowledge, and streamlining the migration effort.

A Cross-Functional Balancing Act

This was not just a technical challenge—it was a business transformation requiring collaboration across multiple perspectives:

• Business leaders ensuring the solution aligned with strategic goals

• Regional teams providing input on unique process requirements

• Technology teams executing the modernization while keeping daily operations stable

• Finance and compliance experts ensuring the system adhered to regulatory standards

Unlike traditional IT-led modernization projects, this was not just an engineering effort—it was a multi-disciplinary push to reimagine how CROPS should work for the next decade.

What Comes Next

Modernization is not a single event—it is a continuous evolution. The journey ahead includes:

• Phased rollouts across business functions and regions

• AI-driven insights that enhance decision-making

• Refining automation and process efficiencies to reduce friction in operations

• A controlled transition that ensures CROPS 2.0 is more than just an upgrade—it is an adaptive, scalable foundation for the future

The work is far from done, but one thing is clear—this is more than a technology overhaul. It is about future-proofing the way CellMark operates without disrupting what has made it successful. The challenge is great, but so is the opportunity.