When four regional Dunkin Donuts suppliers merged in 2012, they integrated their workers and processes, but they did not initially merge their IT systems and data.

The combined company, called National DCP LLC, is a $2 billion supply chain management cooperative that serves Dunkin Donut franchises. But the merged company left five different sets of core systems to maintain and run. Each regional operation kept its own system running and the new corporation started its own.

That was five times too many systems, said Darrell Riekena, the CIO of National DCP.

However, pulling in major partners that will work with a company as it moves through a major IT undertaking is no easy task.

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