Case Studies

Cottage Farms pack with pride !

Case Study - Cottage Farms pack with pride !

13 July 2020

Cottage Farms is part of the Avalon produce group of grower/packers, based in Tonbridge, Kent whose main line of produce is applies and pears and they carry our Third Part packing at their new facility which opened in 2014. Gently handling up to 55,000 apples per hour at their busiest it was vital to have a software solution in place, with quality and accuracy their key to success.

 

THE CHALLENGE

Before Freshware, all warehouse and packing information was manually entered into spreadsheets, which meant that there was no real time information on stock levels, production efficiency, status or orders and the P&L Information, as well as the time consuming task of entering all of the data manually. Chris Browning ( Managing Director ) approached Affinitus, to discuss the implementation of a full ERP system covering warehouse, management, sales, production and distribution.

THE SOLUTION

Affinitus recommended the Freshware packhouse software solution, along with wireless handheld units to capture the data in real time. Freshware was able to integrate into the multi million pound Aweta apple grade, which allowed stock to be booked in automatically, in real time, as every bin that comes of the grader has a unique bar-code identifier, which allows for full traceability throughout the packing and distribution process.

When the system went live, the impact was immediate , duplication of information was eradicated and all the production details such as quantities packed, stock used, line and labour efficiencies were collected in real time at the point of packing.

KEY BENEFITS as described by Chris Browning MD

  •  Accurate Stock
  • Reduced Paperwork
  • Clear View on grading information
  • More Control of the Whole Business
  • Live Real time view of the business at any time
Williamson Food Service

Case Study - Williamson Food Service

10 July 2020

Williamson Foodservice is a family owned and operated business based in Inverness with depots in Stornoway and Glasgow. Specialising in fresh and chilled food and drink they operate a temperature controlled fleet of 36 trucks which services the hospitality and retail industries throughout the North of Scotland and Western Isles.

“We have been customers of Affinitus for many years” commented Gary Williamson, CEO “originally with the MarketMaster solution, and then upgrading to ChefServe some 5 years ago”.

ChefServe underpins Willamson’s Order Processing, Purchasing, Inventory, Warehousing and Distribution facilities. It is a complete ERP system enabling the business by integrating all operations creating ‘one version of the truth’.

“Fast order entry and fast order turnround are key to food service” observed Gary “if we can’t provide it, someone else will, so having timely and accurate data for decision making is key for us, and that is what ChefServe delivers”.

The company have some 40 users on the system and have recently added the Customer Web Portal to enable customers to place orders online. “The portal is proving useful as it reduces the number of in-bound calls” confirmed Gary “so enabling our tele sales team to focus more on outbound/market-building calls to driving growth in the business”.

Fresh produce is a big part of the Williamsom’s food service business, “We offer a range of food stuffs to our customers including dairy, seafood, soft drinks, wines and spirits, cakes, but fresh produce accounts for about 45% so Affinitus’s track record in ‘Fresh ERP’ is a definite benefit”.

Like many food service companies, the business is heavily reliant on tourism, and has naturally been affected by the Covid19 pandemic.

“Without the pandemic we have a painfully short season; essentially every investment we make costs twice as much as we only have a 6 month year!” commented Williamson “Come October the weather and short days mark an end to our tourist season. Our business is built on people eating away from home, and lockdown has meant we have had to create new business models to survive. We have seen a growth in other markets as our competitors shut down, including direct sale to consumers. We have launched ‘Ness Valley’, our own direct sale customer portal, and that has been successful for us. We have also seen an increase in orders from the NHS and business with the oil service vessels and drilling platforms. We fully expect these to slow down over the coming weeks as business starts to return to normal, but in recent weeks these new markets have helped us a great deal ”.

Scotland re-opens on July 15th, and there are signs of life as hotels and restaurants start to gear up for an 8 week summer period.

“ChefServe does what we need it to do” concluded Williamson “and we rely on it to run our business. There are extra features we would like to see in the product, but I know Affinitus are always investing and working on new versions”.

TH Clements Install both Agrilogik and Freshware Modules of Affinitus ERP

Case Study - TH Clements Install both Agrilogik and Freshware Modules of Affinitus ERP

17 February 2020

UK’s Largest Brassica Grower TH Clements Install Freshware

Following a lengthy selection process where 16 potential suppliers of ERP Software were whittled down to just 3, Affinitus Group were chosen to supply the Freshware ERP Fresh Produce Management Software and the Agrilogik Field, Crop and Harvest Management modules and the system went live in September 2018 in time to get everyone used to the software before the Christmas rush. With Christmas 2018 out the way, the next stage of implementation commenced with the implementation of the costings modules and business analytics.

Please click the link below for the video

 

 

 

Ron Dadge

Case Study - Ron Dadge

14 January 2020

OVERVIEW

Ron Dadge is a family owned business based in Pershore.  Their main business is split into two, Direct selling of Fresh produce from Italy to Europe and the UK Market, and importing and selling to the UK wholesale market.

CHALLENGES

One of the main challenges that faced Ron Dadge with their current system, was the inability to create the necessary paperwork needed to import produce from Europe to the UK.  This included CMR’s, Purchase order and transport notifications, in both English and Italian.  They were also unable to separate the two businesses and produce detailed management reports for both arms of the company.

All of the Italian business and some of the Wholesale business was being run using spreadsheets.  This resulted in a lot of time consuming and sometimes double entry.

Ron Dadge also wanted to capture the costs of everything from inbound haulage, rebates, transhipment charges, handling and outgoing haulage to make sure the correct margins were being made and to increase profits.

 

Additional information

SOLUTION

Affinitus set out to streamline the data entry of the business, by automating the Direct delivery part of the business, with a dedicated screen which allows the user to select multiple purchase orders, select haulier and destination, and the system automatically created the sales orders, and allocated all stock. This then allowed the user to easily generate CMR’s and all accompanying documentation and email these documents directly from our Freshware system, saving hours of manual creation of these documents.

On top of this we separated both arms of the company to allow accurate reporting of each part of the business, but still allowing full transparency of the entire business through one system.

By displaying exact costs of all produce bought, an accurate and immediate profit and loss is available at the point of sale, with a dedicated “Grower returns” screen, which shows all purchase and sales information and costs, and gave the user a percentage profit immediately without the need to run any additional reports.

Ron Dadge will be using our V7 Business Analytics program to help them get information at a glance instead of having to find the report or spreadsheet on file and cross reference it with something else.

Matt Dadge Comments

“Malcolm and Ellis have been great, they ask a million questions and question a million things. Which is definitely a plus as this is what we wanted, and only by them doing this have they been able to accomplish what they have. Definitely a credit to you guys.

We knew it wouldn’t have been an easy task as we have effectively three different sides to our operation with three different methods to do them all. For us it was easy before because we were doing 75% of imports manually on spreadsheets and 100 % of exports on spreadsheets, so to make them all flow into one as Malcolm and Ellis are doing is not far off a miracle they look as though they are going to pull it off.”

Thanks again for the support we’ve received. Definitely recommend Affinitus!