Food manufacturer trims the fat
Low fat food supplier integrates systems with major supermarkets
Low fat foods manufacturer Anthony Alan Foods has installed new software to integrate with supply chains at major supermarkets.
AA Foods, which supplies low fat cakes and pastries under the Weight Watchers brand, was operating on an outdated system that could not be adapted.
Big supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s wanted the small business to plug straight into their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems so they could place orders and interact electronically.
AA Foods had also grown in four years from nothing to a company with annual turnover of £20m and 3500 orders to meet.
It installed Microsoft Dynamics GP, which gives it the ability to process electronic orders from its customers and integrate them immediately into the financial systems.
This means management can extract reports to get snapshots of the business in near-real time. It can also connect to IT-intensive customers on the same terms as larger competitors and keep a closer eye on its profit and loss account.
AA Foods finance director Paul Vandrill says the implementation is seamless and also means its IT costs are less than £20,000 a year.
‘When you are up against Asda and Tesco, you need real time information about the margins you are achieving,’ Vandrill said. ‘Microsoft Dynamics gives us everything we want and it gives us the connectivity into other programs we need.’
What do you think? Email us at [email protected]
Further reading
RFID systems bolster integration