Case Study: Classic Fine Foods improves productivity.
Classic Fine Foods is a market-leading importer and distributor of fine foods. It serves the vast majority of five-star hotels and high-end restaurants in Asia, and has an expanding presence in the Middle East and Europe.
Partnering with the world’s best food producers to offer products that are of the highest quality and integrity, Classic Fine Foods enables the creation of menus and recipes for the most demanding of tastes.
With operations across south-east Asia, the Middle East and Europe, the company sources, imports, stores, markets and distributes its fine foods products.
Change due to growth.
The company’s growth meant a move into new offices. To improve productivity and to facilitate the picking process, this also meant moving to a larger warehouse. As Project Manager Christophe Jean-Louis explains, “Our IT system was old and outdated. As we were planning to move anyway, we decided to use the move as an opportunity to upgrade our systems and servers too.
“We needed to upgrade the existing infrastructure, but also to upgrade so that we could plan in future projects such as ecommerce and EDI.”
The overriding aim was to relocate the whole warehouse and offices without having to halt the day to day business of taking and fulfilling orders. This meant not only moving all the stock physically, but also electronically transferring all the product lines over to the new system. And all the software implementation needed to be achieved with minimum administration in the shortest possible time.
Systems for improved enterprise-wide productivity.
This complex operation took many months of scoping and planning. Balloon One’s final proposal was to implement SAP Business One as the ERP system, with K.Motion WMS for the warehouse management (formally called Accellos One). Additionally, the Valogix Inventory Planner stock forecasting and planning tool was employed, along with Balloon One’s own Business Springboard Delivery app.
The Business Springboard Delivery app incorporates proof of delivery (POD). It is a uniquely flexible system that integrates seamlessly with SAP Business One to automate direct-to-customer supply chain and vendor managed inventory applications. It reduces paperwork, cuts admin costs and enables immediate invoicing.
Despite the project’s seeming complexity, involving four new systems, it took Balloon One just five days to implement and set up the new systems. This involved moving over one thousand product lines over the weekend.
The results.
Explains Christophe Jean-Louis, “The whole project ran smoothly and everything was completed on time. The products were very easily moved over on the system, which saved us so much time as we had only three days to move and settle into our new warehouse. And we did not get any down time which was very important to us.”
After the weekend project was completed, Classic Fine Foods was able to serve all of its customers and deliver to them without any issues.
Recounts Christophe Jean-Louis, “It was great to have Balloon One help us out as they were professional about everything. We don’t really have any IT people in our own company, so it was good to have Balloon One, who know our business so well.”
Classic Fine Foods has seen improved efficiency and productivity in the warehouse, as it is better organised, with pickers now able to pick by zones. And with the new working environment and new IT equipment, not only is the business running more smoothly and more efficiently, the staff are also happier.
If you would like to find out 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.
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