Leading UK fresh fruit importer-marketer Vidafresh has had a relationship with Affinitus since its earliest days. The Dartford-based company, which specialises in melons and pineapples, had an early version of Freshware in place when it officially began life in March 2010, and its relationship with Affinitus has continued to develop in the years since.
Vidafresh installed the newer version of Freshware in November 2014; having worked with Affinitus on a bespoke, tailored system that was focused on its needs as a business, covering the areas of stock control, logistics and accounting.
Commercial director Chris Rawlins says the system upgrade was made to reflect the significant growth that Vidafresh has achieved over the past six years, explaining that the company invested heavily in partnership with Affinitus to build a system that suits its needs.
Although Rawlins admits that the tailored system is constantly a work in progress as the business is growing and adapting – explaining that Vidafresh is working closely with Affinitus to get where it needs to be – he says the firm is constantly seeing the benefits of what it has been doing.
The new system, he says, gives companies the capability to add different modules for different reporting functions for better business management.
Vidafresh’s initial changeover to the latest software in late 2014 was followed by a period of implementation and what he describes as work to get the system up to speed.
During the last six-nine months, Rawlins says Vidafresh and Affinitus have focused on system changes and tweaks, making sure functions are in place that would be of benefit to the importer’s day-to-day business.
“Once all of that is up and running, and working, it’s going to have a huge impact on what we do because it’s tailored specifically to our needs and you wouldn’t get that with an off the shelf package,” he says.
Rawlings adds that Vidafresh is separately in the midst of bringing in its own servers on site – at the moment these are hosted off-site – with the assistance of Affinitus, as part of a complete overhaul of its functions, which is expected in bear fruit in the months to come.