Scandinavian Kitchen is one of the UK’s leading Scandinavian food outlets. Through both its online store and its central London café and shop, the company provides freshly-made food and groceries from across Scandinavia.
Scandinavian Kitchen was established by a Dane and a Swede, who aim to bring the best of Nordic cuisine to their customers. Since its foundation in 2007, it has grown to become the UK’s largest distributor of Scandinavian food and drinks. It sells and distributes its goods to individual consumers and to more than 200 businesses across the UK. Offering a range of everyday and gourmet Scandinavian favourites though its “ScandiKitchen” brand – including products from Denmark, Sweden and Norway – Scandinavian Kitchen offers both ambient and fresh produce, ranging from crispbreads to gourmet charcuterie.
Replacing old, disparate systems
Scandinavian Kitchen was using an in-house system along with Quickbooks and many Excel spreadsheets to run its finance, accounting, stock control, sales and warehousing operations. There was no integration between any of the software. Explains Operations Manager, Lukasz Wlodarczyk, “To obtain the correct information was a challenging process. Reporting was awkward and demanding and the systems we used could not handle multiple units of measure for the stock.”
Additionally, allocation of stock availability and all-round access to the correct data proved difficult. Scandinavian Kitchen didn’t feel its systems handled their multi-currency needs strongly enough. Batch control – a function that is vital to food and drinks distributors – was also lacking.
With expansion as one of its aims, the company couldn’t continue in this way and looked to update its systems into a single ERP solution.
A move to the cloud
Explains Wlodarczyk, “As a growing company with a wholesale arm, café, online shop and trading shop, we required a solution we could grow with.”
After speaking with Balloon One to obtain information and have some demonstrations, it became clear that NetSuite was the optimal software for Scandinavian Kitchen. It suits companies of all sizes and has a reputation as software that truly can grow with a company.
Continues Wlodarczyk, “Balloon One has experience of food and drinks distribution and so understood our pains. They took time in the pre-sales approach to cover all we required to make the decision to move forwards.”
“We always wanted to go the cloud route anyway,“ enthuses Wlodarczyk, “And NetSuite integrates the website’s ecommerce solution into the finance software.“
Straight “out of the box”, NetSuite provides features that cover wholesale, distribution, CRM and marketing.
States Wlodarczyk, “NetSuite was a solution that we felt could help us move forwards. Internal CRM was a big factor and NetSuite is a true cloud offering. Balloon One was able to show us the benefits of NetSuite hosting the solution and being in control of the back-ups. And as Scandinavian Kitchen grows and changes, we have a solution that can help.”
Facilitating Growth
Scandinavian Kitchen now has eight users running NetSuite’s Lite edition. Balloon One managed the project from start to finish and also helped the company tidy up its stock and customer files to make the change process easier.
The company has also integrated NetSuite with its current EPoS solution. “Now that the staff have got used to the change, the additional processes are being added,” discloses Wlodarczyk. “We are saving a lot of time and resource. We are giving our customers the excellent customer service that our company strives for.”
Wlodarczyk concludes, “The project has completely addressed the initial objectives. Our previous systems were inhibiting our ability to grow. Now we are growing in the UK and have ready access to data to easily and swiftly make business decisions.”
Additionally, Scandinavian Kitchen has integrated the NetSuite ecommerce solution. This allowed it to offer customers the ability to order on-line and then collect in store.
If you would like to learn more about the ERP and warehouse management systems that have helped our food distribution customers, please call us for a free demonstration on 020 8819 9071 or contact us using the website form.
If you missed Scandinavian Kitchen on Sunday Brunch a few months ago, then they will be back on our screens on the same show again on Sunday 19th December 2016. Be sure to tune in to Channel 4 between 9.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. If you miss it, the show will be available on the Channel 4 website for about 4 weeks after that.