Aptean Food & Beverage ERP Case Study: Fresherized Foods

2 Févr 2022

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Fresherized Foods Uses Industry-Specific ERP to Excel in Inventory Management, Traceability, Food Safety and Sales

Known for its high-quality Wholly Guacamole and Wholly Salsa products, Fresherized Foods is a global leader in food processing technology that provides food service and retail customers with a number of products. The Saginaw, Texas-based company uses “fresherization” or high-pressure processing in creating its fresh dip product lines while ensuring the highest level of food safety.

The Challenge

As Fresherized Foods grew, its existing business systems weren’t keeping pace. Inventory records were kept in disparate Excel files and there wasn’t one global system for inventory. To determine the exact amount of stock in each facility, an employee had to manually count the inventory.

This presented many challenges including:

Siloed inventory systems that limited visibility
Struggles to accommodate last-minute order changes
Difficulty balancing supply and demand

Late modifications of sales orders created the biggest problems for Fresherized Foods. If a customer wanted more or less of a product at the last minute, it put the business in a bind because it was difficult to know the exact correct adjustment that needed to be made to the production schedule.

“You couldn’t go into the system to see what we needed to order,” commented Drew Winborn, Finance Analyst at Fresherized Foods. “It was extremely inefficient and very labor-intensive. We all did a good job at it, after we got used to it, but we knew we needed a change.”

“We have the information we need to be able to make split-second decisions. And on the accounting side, it’s now linked with inventory, which gives us the ability to have cost accounting based on the actual cost experienced by item at the end of each period.”

Drew WinbornFinance AnalystFresherized Foods

The Solution

What Fresherized Foods needed was a real-time inventory system that was tied into the accounting system. After visiting another Aptean Food & Beverage ERP customer, the company’s leaders were convinced that the combination of Aptean’s specialized software and dedicated support would help improve their operations.

“We were looking for a solution that would handle inventory, and we also needed something that was as good as it could get on the traceability side,” Winborn said.

Designed specifically for food and beverage manufacturers, Aptean’s food ERP fit the bill perfectly with features for bi-directional traceability, comprehensive inventory management, food safety, demand forecasting and production scheduling.

“The way you can filter and see all the components relatively instantly, it was the best we’d seen,” Winborn stated. “Any other system that was close to the traceability side was not user-friendly on the accounting side. But Aptean Food & Beverage ERP is a very accounting-friendly ERP system.”

The Result

Having lot traceability and inventory information readily available were just two of the benefits Aptean’s food ERP delivered for Fresherized Foods. The solution also gave the company much stronger control and visibility into other operational areas including:

Better grasp of sales analytics and product costing
Greater inventory accuracy, efficiency and enhanced insight
Solid support for ongoing food safety procedures

With help from the Aptean team, Fresherized Foods now has a report built for its specific needs—helping improve the efficiency of its inventory turns while better managing the tight shelf life of its items for excellent customer satisfaction.

“It lines all the sales orders up by delivery date and allocates the correct inventory for them based on each item’s guaranteed shelf life to the customer,” Winborn said.

“We can see the cost of each case based on the real quantities and costs of the components that are inside every finished good.”

Drew WinbornFinance AnalystFresherized Foods

Conclusion

Upon realizing the benefits of implementing a purpose-built food ERP solution, Fresherized Foods plans to improve its processes further by implementing warehouse scanning to record its inventory.

“We’re going to have scanning when it comes off the finished goods line so it will be automatically put into inventory instead of manually key entered, Winborn continued.

With Aptean Food & Beverage ERP as the foundation of its tech stack, Fresherized Foods is able to increase efficiency, automate time-consuming processes and remove siloes between systems and departments. All of this enables the company to focus on growing its business and driving profitability.

Ready To Dip into the Benefits of Aptean Food ERP for Your Business?

Whether you’re looking to better manage food traceability, allergen management, food safety, product shelf life management or quality assurance, our food and beverage ERP has you covered with specialized functionality for all of this and more.

Our decades of experience and in-depth knowledge of the industry help us serve customers across the world in a range of food and beverage verticals, including dairy, fresh produce, bakery, meat, seafood and poultry. So, you can be confident that our dedicated industry-specific teams “speak your language” and can help tackle your challenges with innovative and user-friendly cloud software.

What’s more, we offer a range of complementary solutions to build upon the foundation of your food ERP and power your full digital transformation journey—from product lifecycle management (PLM) software to transportation management systems (TMS). Because we pride ourselves on being a by-your-side partner, helping you accelerate success and always be Ready for What’s Next, Now^®.

Take a deeper dive into our full range of software for food and beverage businesses or get in touch with our expert team for a personalized demo today.