FDBusiness.com

“Frozen food manufacturer goes live with Solarsoft’s Tropos ERP system to improve profitability and productivity, whilst driving down costs”

Glendale Foods, the meat and food processing specialist, has gone live with ERP software from Solarsoft to support the business in its ongoing focus on streamlining processes, improving stock control and increasing overall operational efficiency. Solarsoft’s Tropos solution was selected after stiff competition from several vendors (including SAP) because of its unique position as a specialist ERP solution for the food processing industry, developed in co-operation with its user community to provide “out of the box”, best-in-class functionality for food manufacturers. Using Tropos, Glendale Foods is now able to manufacture its products in more economical quantities, and it has instant access to the key data requirements for food manufacturers.

With an annual turnover of around £11million and over 150 employees, Glendale Foods is a well-established and innovative player within the food processing sector. Its customers range from major food manufacturers and ready meal suppliers to airlines, frozen foodservice distributors and pub & restaurant groups. It also has a presence in retail with its own brands; Yankee snacks, The Great British Pudding Company and Unique Cuisine.

Following a number of acquisitions Glendale has grown over recent years to the point where its management recognised that its previous IT systems were no longer fit for purpose. There was no integration between systems and many processes were paper-based, which created time delays and resulted in a number of inaccuracies. Glendale evaluated offerings from several vendors, but went with Solarsoft’s Tropos because both software and vendor proved the closest match to the needs of a growing food manufacturer.

Paul Burkitt, Managing Director of Glendale Foods, explains, “Having evaluated the market to see what options were available to us, I was very impressed by the fact that Tropos is specifically tailored for the food manufacturing industry. In contrast it would have taken us another 12 to 18 months to develop the same level of functionality in SAP or a similar “generic” ERP offering. Solarsoft really understands the food industry and all the specific requirements and compliance issues that we have, and this is reflected in the Tropos system. Everything is located in a central location, giving us easy access to all necessary data including accurate product costings and real-time details on stock levels.”

Burkitt adds, “A key benefit of Tropos is that we now have highly sophisticated stock management capabilities. We have a vast number of SKUs as we have hundreds of products but Tropos gives us the ability to reduce the level of stock significantly so that we can operate a ‘just-in-time’ model. This allows us to release cash, reduce our costs of storing and monitoring stock, whilst also enabling us to manufacture in more economical quantities.”

Moving forward, Glendale Foods is planning to integrate further business functions into Tropos. In particular, it plans to bring its staff clocking system into Tropos so that it can automatically trace when employees clock in and out and assign the labour budgets accurately.

Burkitt concludes, “I have been really impressed with the service from Solarsoft. The consultancy we have received has been excellent and we have found Solarsoft to be extremely helpful and professional. They worked really hard to make the implementation as smooth and painless as possible. We are very excited about the wealth of opportunities that Tropos will now bring to our business and we are looking forward to having timely and accurate information available to us that will lead to better business decisions and improve our business performance.”

For more information, please visit www.solarsoft.com