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East End Foods has chosen Mysoft to implement their new ERP solution, Sage X3.East End Foods has an annual turnover of £180 million and has been a leading supplier and innovator in the UK-Indian food market for over 40 years.From their progressive plant in the West Midlands,East End Foods supplies over 80% of Asian independents as well as all the major UK multiples.
East End Foods required an ERP platform to unify the sharing of information across the business, with a solution covering manufacturing, distribution and accounts functions.
After carefully reviewing the market place the decision was made that Sage X3, implemented through Mysoft, would be the best long-term solution to meet all of East Ends’ key business requirements.
According to Sunita Ruprai, East End’s ERP Project Manager: “Due to both Mysoft’s extensive experience and Sage X3’s comprehensive capabilities, we have been able to meet all of our requirements in one fully integrated package. By covering manufacturing through to-end sale, we have complete visibility and traceability of our products. This is a key factor in enabling us to meet compliance and quality control in our industry.”
Sage X3 provides many specific benefits for East End Foods: A single unified system offering forward and backward traceability of production, flexible reporting, workflow to control alerts & processing and powerful integration to allow visibility across East End Food’s multiple sites.
Currently, the different departments of East End Foods use different systems. This leads to duplication and manual processing due to the lack of information transfer. Sage X3 delivers a modern, easy-to-use system, which incorporates all of these areas in a single integrated package. This will provide East End Foods with the ability to make informed decisions in real-time and gain full visibility of all the functions across their business.
Chris Schafer Director of Mysoft commented, “I am delighted that East End Foods have selected Sage X3 as their new ERP platform. Once live, I believe Sage X3 will offer East End significant business benefits and a real competitive advantage.”
Nottingham Venues is a collection of independent spaces specialising in meetings and events, located across the grounds of the University of Nottingham. Having recently taken the step to bring all their conferencing, hotel, and event venues under one iconic brand, the challenge was to recreate an exact replica of the system they had been working on previously under third-party management in a short window of time.
As part of this process, there was a need to source, provision, and deploy all the requisite business systems to support the day-to-day operations. One such requirement was the accounting and finance function. From previous experience, via the third party, it was determined that Sage X3 was an ideal fit for this expedited transition; using Sage X3 would allow for key business system continuity and the chance to “recycle” existing systems knowledge, thus reducing the project burden.
Libby Wain, the Financial Controller at Nottingham Venues, explains “We knew we wanted to copy over what already existed. We knew it worked and we knew it well. We needed to withstand any disruption from the move rather than creating disruption from upgrading or diverting away from the software”.
After using a third party (an existing Mysoft customer) for a number of years to administer some internal systems, Nottingham Venues undertook to bring this capability back in-house. With an aim to limit the impact on the workforce, and knowing that Mysoft were familiar with the system, the Nottingham Venues team selected Mysoft to navigate them through the project to implement Sage X3.
A seamless, timely transition was of the utmost importance because of the nature of the business; with a key focus on ‘business as usual’ continuing undisturbed. Working collaboratively with Nottingham Venues, Mysoft was able to get the system up and running two weeks ahead of the original schedule, enabling the team at Nottingham Venues to adjust to the move and remove the pressure of any last-minute changes.
Libby says, “I was given enough time, I was given enough support, I was given the right templates and the ability to look at that data to make sure it was working, and it looked as it should. I’m looking at the screen on day one and it just looked exactly the same, so we were able to carry on as before. There was no downtime, there was no cut-out, and there was no disruption.”
“This wasn’t the only system that we changed, we changed everything, so we had experiences of everything. But this project was one that we didn’t need to worry about. It was very straightforward and smooth.”. This was a critical aspect of the project; the implementation of Sage X3 was just one of a multitude of business systems being implemented and by working collaboratively to deliver the Sage X3 system Mysoft allowed Nottingham Venues the ‘breathing space’ to tackle other, more challenging, elements.
Libby felt that the relationship between Mysoft and Nottingham Venues was a true partnership, saying, “Mysoft were transparent, supportive, and helpful.”. The flexible and personal approach to the project was also noted by Libby, she emphasises that “The team at Mysoft have been brilliant. They were so accessible and so dedicated to our project, always open to being asked questions or jumping on a call which would make things so much easier. Everything was timely, there was no dishonesty and nothing was promised that could not be achieved.”
Nottingham Venues are now approaching an exciting period of discovery which will enable them to further enhance and streamline their processes within Sage X3, with the help of Mysoft.
“We are going through discovery at the moment. We have got an idea of things that we believe could be improved. It’s just those next steps now and I’ve no doubt Mysoft will be able to do it. Ross does everything!”
Nottingham Venues and Mysoft view this project as a total success and look forward to continuing their journey together. “We would 100% recommend Mysoft to another company. We have no fear of moving into another project with the Mysoft team, which is highly likely. It was an easy process and a very sound company to work with.”.
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Founded in 1945 by Raoul Amar, R.H. Amar & Co. Ltd. is now one of the UK’s leading importers and distributors of fine foods. The company remains family owned and is committed to delivering quality and excellence to all sectors of the UK marketplace: supermarket chains, independent retailers, wholesalers and cash & carry.
Today R.H. Amar operates from a single site office and 85k sq. ft. warehousing facility in High Wycombe. The company supplies 35 fine food brands across a dozen product categories and as a leading full service importer, they provide sales, marketing, category management and new product development. In addition, R.H. Amar has in-house food technologists assisting with branded and private label food development.
The primary challenge for R.H.Amar was the need to move from their existing legacy system, which had reached end of life, to a modern business management solution. This requirement was further driven by the insistence of the supermarket chains to trade electronically via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). EDI was fast becoming the method of choice for exchanging messages, orders, advance shipping notices and invoices.
In addition, R.H. Amar recognised a need to improve the efficiency of reporting in order to effectively manage their business. They needed to be able to produce accurate reporting to give increased visibility of Landed Costs. The company also had a requirement for improved management of Promotional Activities – a need for tighter control of demand planning and complex costings.
R.H. Amar and Mysoft enjoyed a successful existing relationship which both companies were very happy to continue. Mysoft held a unique position with regard to R.H. Amar’s re-appraisal process as they already had an existing in-depth understanding of R.H. Amar’s business activities. This enabled a smooth transition to the new business management solution.
However, it wasn’t just the existing relationship which made the Mysoft team the right people for the job. As John Lilleystone explains:
“Selecting Mysoft as our technology partner was an easy choice for R.H. Amar because they have expertise in all the areas we needed to implement as a business. This included data migration from our legacy ERP system, Crystal reporting, EDI integration, Supply Chain solutions and bespoke software customisation.”
Sage X3 is a web-native, functionally rich and highly tailorable business management solution designed to meet the needs of distribution, manufacturing and service orientated businesses. Sage X3 is versatile, easy to use and covers a wide range of functional areas including accounts, distribution, manufacturing and CRM. Sage X3 also provides an SQL database platform which provides improved reporting functionality.
