How Markris Foods Uncovered Vital Efficiencies With SAP Business One

To be a successful food supplier or wholesale food distributor, visibility is everything.

To operate efficiently, and maximise your profits, you need to know exactly where your products are coming from, where they are at any time, where they are heading, and when they arrive. Plus, you need to integrate this data across the rest of your business – so your supply chain is connected with your customer relationship management, your financial systems, your procurement data, your purchasing processes, and much more.

Doing so, of course, requires having a robust and reliable technology solution in place.

It’s why, when Queensland-based wholesale food distributors, Markris Foods, wanted to upgrade their ERP solution, they turned to us. Working closely with Markris Foods, we scoped and implemented an overarching business management solution based on SAP Business One.

The challenge for Markris Foods

Markris delivers to all sectors of the hospitality industry, including restaurants, food vans, cafes, pizzerias, fish and chips outlets, caterers, clubs, bars, resorts, schools and hospitals. They offer a combination of popular and gourmet/niche products from brands such as Lion, Fonterra, and Heinz.

Markris has a reputation for excellent customer service, and will frequently go the extra mile for their clients – even if it means making ad-hoc deliveries or sourcing specific one-off products.

According to Neil Cole, Director of Markris Foods, it’s not uncommon for clients to request more than one delivery in a day.

Yet when it came to enabling this level of flexibility – and catering for such a diverse product and client offering, the business found its previous ERP system simply wasn’t keeping up.

“We needed to find a new solution because our old solution was very outdated. As a business we want to move forward and look for a product that would allow us to expand on what we already do but then also look towards the future,” says Chris Cole, Markris Foods’ Business Development Manager.

Partnering to find a solution

Leverage Technologies worked closely to understand Markris Foods’ needs, and then developed and deployed SAP Business One solution.

Designed specifically for small businesses, SAP Business One is a single, affordable solution that helps Markris Foods manage their entire company – including their financial management, sales and customer management, purchasing and inventory control and production planning.

It also incorporates business intelligence, and easy to understand analytics and reporting, so the company’s decision-makers have vital information about the company’s performance, and can identify and rectify issues before they escalate.

As the business opted for the cloud-based version, they can also securely access the insights from SAP Business One from anywhere, and from any connected device.

Outstanding results

Offering a single, streamlined view of the business, SAP Business One has given Markris Foods all-important visibility over their supply chain. The solution is flexible, modular and powerful – and thanks to its user-friendly interface, was quickly adopted by users.

“SAP Business One has allowed us to streamline a lot of our processes, from both a sales point of view and also a purchasing point of view,” says Chris Cole.

“Any business that’s looking at changing ERP systems, the one thing I would say is to do your research. Make sure you know exactly what you want to get out of the system before you start.”

Cole also suggests taking the time to find an implementation partner that understands your business.

“In our industry it’s very hard to find people who really know what’s going on, and we found that Leverage Technologies really understood our business,” he says.

“The support offered by the team was absolutely outstanding and we couldn’t be where we are right now without them. The support offered, as well as the relationships that we have built up, are going to put us in good stead for the future.”

“There are lots of things I could say about SAP Business One. Overall, SAP Business One has allowed us to become a more efficient and better functioning business,” he adds.

“I don’t know how Markris would cope without it to be truthful,” says Browne. “We do everything from purchasing to stock-takes to bin locations to reports on sales; telling us what our top five customers are, things that we never had privy to… when we had our old system.”

How can Leverage Technologies help?

If you operate a wholesale distribution business, you need the right technology in place to help you maximise efficiency and profits.

As a trusted SAP Partner, Leverage Technologies has extensive experience in deploying SAP Business One for a range of businesses, and across several industries. You can start with a basic on-premise implementation with just a few users, or you can get the cloud solution, which is available for a monthly fee.

To find out more about SAP Business One, book a free demo today, or give us a call on 1300 045 046.