IndustryBuilt Software

BACKGROUND

Can you give a brief description of what your company does?

We are a cookie manufacturer. We manufacture nutrition-rich cookies. Our first ship date was April of 2011. We’re at slightly more that a year and a half of shipping. We’re a brand new startup company. Right now, we have six flavors of cookies. We sell primarily into the retail channel, and a little bit into club and drug stores.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main business goals or objectives for undertaking the project?

We needed obviously to start up. Cost was very important to us. Cost is imperative, making sure it was something we could afford. When we first started the company, there were only seven employees when I first joined. It had to be something that was very intuitive, easy to use, easy to train people on. Obviously, we wanted a partner that we could partner with long-term. We don’t look at it as a short-term solution. We’re hoping to partner with whoever we partner with as we grow. It was really important to get somebody that we felt comfortable with, and had really strong personnel that were strong in not only the math, but just as far as working with customers and things like that.

What was your main process for discovering JustFoodERP?

We used the Internet. We used a lot of old contacts that had gone on to work for other companies, that had exposure to different software. We just started looking at what are the different software out there. Again, a lot we found on the Internet, making calls, and having salespeople call us. We made a big matrix, started figuring out what made most sense to us. We wanted a company that was already focused on food. With seven people, and I’m the only IT person, we didn’t have a lot of time for customization. It became really important for us to find something that we didn’t have to customize a lot that we could fit into. As we pared everything down and started interviewing, we got to the top five, started having people come out and give demos. From there, we were very quickly able to determine whether, from a price standpoint,
they’re going to meet it from a fit standpoint, and really just if they’re going to be able to have the functionality with a lot of customization. We got it down to our last three, had further demos and then selected JustFoodERP from there.

SOLUTION

Could you tell a little more about the project itself?

Again, being a startup, we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have any type of finance system or anything. We’re basically starting from scratch. The first part of the project, when I started in 2009, was the financials just to get something up and running on financial so we could start tracking. We weren’t ready to ship yet. We were still doing a lot of research and getting our manufacturing up and going. We wanted a system to be able to start tracking our POs, vendor payments, and things like that. The first part of the project was all the financial side of things, general ledger, vendors, and things like that. That was the first part of our project. The second part was everything else. We ordered a cache type of process. We had some inventory modules that we run. We have the sales. We have just about everything else. The only piece we really don’t have is manufacturing because we co-manufacture. We don’t track all the raw ingredients ourselves. When it becomes a finished good, that’s when we take it into our system. From there, we’re responsible for it. We send a forecast to our co-manufacturer. They make the product.

Once the product becomes a finished good, then it comes into our warehouse. We then send it to our third-party warehouse distributors to send it on to the customer. During this time, we had worked with JustFoodERP. One of the reasons we selected JustFoodERP is they were a little bit, we thought, further along in developing a trade module. The trade module to be able to track all the money that we spent with the retailers. Whether it be for an ad, a display, a bill back, an off invoice, those are all dollars and important for us to track. It was important for us to find somebody that had a software. While it wasn’t perfect, JustFoodERP had developed one, and was a little further along the path than the other companies we looked at. They were willing to work with us. We had several people on board that had worked with trade, and knew what we wanted to develop. They were willing to work with us and partner with us to help build out and fine tune their trade module. That was another big reason. Everything else, all the other modules other than manufacturing, most of the main modules we implemented.

How long ago was the project completed?

We went live in April of 2011. It has been about a little more than a year and a half.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How happy are you with the results of the project?

I’m very happy actually. I really like the product. Everyone else does in the company. NAV is probably one of the better ERPs as far as being able to quickly drill down and get information. As the IT person, I find myself not having to write a ton of very specific reports for us to get this answer and that answer. We use JET Reporting Tool on top of NAV. The users, the way NAV’s designed, for the most part can drill in to the table themselves and query out data, filter out data, export to Excel so they can do their own analysis. It really eliminates me having to develop report after report after report. Even with the JET Tool on top, that allows me to build big data dumps that they can use Excel Pivot Table on top of it and really get the information that they want themselves. Overall, we’re very pleased with the software. It’s meeting our needs without customization, which was what we really wanted. NAV allows you to configure setting based upon the different options that you go through when you set up your project. You have various options in the setup table. It’s much better than having to write something customized. Now, it’s easy for us to upgrade because we don’t have all this customization that we now have to go through and look at all the code to make sure everything new coming in is going to break that. Yes, we are very happy with where we are.

When you’re working with JustFoodERP, is there anything that stands out as being unique or special with them compared to other vendors you may have worked with?

I would say, to be honest, I think the people that I’ve worked with. The support people have been really great and nice to work with. Sometimes, during implementation, things can get a little heated. I’ve been through several of them. Sometimes, it’s very hard because you both have a deadline, and you both have budget deadlines. Things aren’t always going to go perfectly or smoothly. I must say that the people implementing all the way up to the VP himself have been very involved. If I have an issue, I can reach out to anybody in the company, and I know I’ll get a call back. I would say it’s their personnel and their support level that I think probably makes them stand out.

Looking back on the project, is there anything you’d do differently a second time around or that you think JustFoodERP can improve upon?

I talked about that customization piece that we did. Again, that was  them building it into their software for other clients to use, which is great. Whenever clients built things, then I get to take advantage of them. It’s great. I do think that ended up taking longer than we expected. We still made our timeline. It made our timeline to test and whatnot a little tighter than we would have liked. I think probably one thing they can work on is when they do agree to take on customization, I think sometimes upfront they need to spend a little bit more time and think through how much resource and time it’s going to be on their part. I think customization is always hard. When you get into it, you find out it’s more complicated than you think. I think maybe spending a little bit more time upfront just understanding what will all be involved in the customization and the resources I’ll need to put against it would probably benefit them.

BACKGROUND

Can you give some background about your company?

We are a food manufacturer of mostly tomato-based products like sauces, salsas, tomato juice, and things like that.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main goal or objective for undertaking the project with JustFoodERP?

Probably a few different things. I think one of the biggest differences from the last ERP that we had is that it had the ability to live track, which is especially important for food manufacturers for recalls like tracing and things like that.

What was the process for originally discovering and choosing JustFoodERP to work with?

I wasn’t a part of the decision-making for that, but I could tell you a little bit about what I do know about that decision.

I know that the company did look into SAP, and decided not to go with them. I don’t have all of the reasons why. But I know that they looked into JustFoodERP, and decided to go with them because of their Microsoft feel and the familiarity with other Microsoft products.

SOLUTION

Was the system built on top of Microsoft NAV?

Yes.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Looking back on the project, how happy are you with the results?

We do have the ability to live track. We are very happy. Almost all of our computer users use JustFoodERP to some degree. You know, it is companywide, pretty much we’re on the same program. That’s really nice.

Is there any ongoing support or maintenance from JustFoodERP?

We’re constantly adding to each module as a separate purchase. There have been a few recent additions that we are still in the process of rolling out. One of them is the warehouse management system. We’re going to be scanning. Right now, we’re still handwriting all of our loss and quantities for each production order that we make every day. Eventually, we are hoping to get to scanning everything straight in the warehouse from the forklift, from the workstations, rather than turning in paperwork to the office – a data entry step later on. That’s probably the biggest most recent addition. Definitely more accurate, timesaving, and things like that. There are a lot of benefits of that.

When working with JustFoodERP, is there anything that stands out as being unique or special about them compared to other vendors you’ve worked with?

Particularly I would say, like I stated earlier, the Microsoft feel. I think that’s a big thing with getting people comfortable with it. A lot of the areas in JustFoodERP, I would say, are similar to Excel. They have the same gridwork, and some of the entering is similar. People can actually do math right in the little cells that they’re working in. If they are doing a purchase order, and they know how many pounds are in each bag of salt,, and they know how many bags they need, they could just do the multiplication right in the cell to figure out how many pounds they need to order. Things like that.

Looking back on the project, is there anything that you’d do differently a second time around or that you think they could improve upon?

I think that the biggest area for improvement might be the speed of maybe getting back to us or closing out cases that we put in for support or help. I know they have a lot of clients. Sometimes, we feel like there’s a little bit more of a gap than we would like. I would say that’s really the only room for improvement that I could think of.