Aptean Food & Beverage ERP Case Study: Fruitful-Berries (UK)

Aptean Food & Beverage ERP

Fruitful-Berries Realises Their Growth Potential with Aptean Food & Beverage ERP Industry

Food & Beverage

Challenges

» Realising their growth ambitions

» Consistency across processes and documentation

» Ensuring compliance with legislation and financial controlling standards

Benefits

» Standardised reporting

across the company due to their new ERP system

» Realising their growth

ambitions without needing to expand their team

About Fruitful-Berries Fruitful-Berries is a young yet experienced and dynamic company, located in the Fresh Park in Venlo, The Netherlands. Fruitful-Berries specialises in the growing, purchasing, packaging and delivering of soft fruits. The company has quickly built up a strong reputation among producers and customers worldwide.

Inconsistencies and technological limitations required a different approach The company’s strong reputation has been accompanied by rapid growth. But in order for them to fully realise this growth, a shift in their ways of working was necessary. “In 2019 we had 2 employees and we still worked a lot in Excel. Due to our growth, this was no longer sufficient. You can do a lot with Excel, but it is also prone to errors.

With larger volumes and more customers, it became increasingly difficult to deliver a good overview,” says Maxim de Roeck, co-founder and owner of Fruitful-Berries.

More challenges lay ahead for the start-up as Maxim explains; “There were inconsistencies in our ways of working, for example in our reports. Due to our growth, we were increasingly reaching our reporting limits. This made it difficult for us particularly when it comes to ensuring proper compliance with regulations and financial controls. We needed to think more about the registration and booking of inventory, and that means more and better automation.”

The search for the right ERP system The search for a suitable automation solution ultimately led to the switch to an ERP system. “We started our search in a targeted manner. As we work in the fresh sector, trading must take place today and not in two weeks’ time so this requires a number of specific properties within an ERP system.”

“To help us make the right choice, we asked our peers for advice by starting discussions at trade fairs and online. Based on the feedback we received, we drew up a shortlist, where we received a demo from each party so we could assess the look and feel of each solution.”

All roads lead to... Aptean!

Ultimately, Aptean’s industry-specific software was chosen based on this shortlist. Why? “A good understanding of the sector was the most important criteria for us, and Aptean has that, as they specialise in industry-specific software and have years of experience in Food & Beverage.”

“Other important points for us were a clean and easy to use look and feel and a quick implementation. Also, as Aptean’s solution is built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform, we are able to work in the cloud, something which was important for us.”

“We were looking for a long-term partnership, and this is certainly what we have gained with Aptean.” Maxim explains.

Case Study | Fruitful-Berries

2

Agile even after implementation “The implementation started with a complete business scan. During the scan, it became apparent that our processes were reasonably in line with a standard ERP system. As a result, everything fit into the platform quite quickly, making the implementation period short, and we did not need to make too many customisations.”

“All of our employees followed the training, which was thorough and intensive as well as educational. However, shortly after our implementation, we noticed that the system was slightly too extensive for our requirements, so after consultation with the project team, we decided to reduce our production clause to 0. We then rebuilt this with a simpler flow. It is great that this agility is available with Aptean.”

“We were looking for a long-term partnership, and this is certainly what we have gained with Aptean.

We can now handle more volume in a structured way with the same number of employees. That’s a big win!”

Maxim de Roeck, Co-founder and Owner, Fruitful-Berries

Achieving uniform and structured growth And what has the implementation of Aptean Food & Beverage ERP brought to this successful start-up? Maxim is enthusiastic about this: “We have created a more professional system. Where previously we only worked with Excel, now we have more extensive reports with lower margins of error. What is also very important to us is that we are now really on the same page in terms of reporting. In other words, every result is reported to the customer in the same way. That is what we wanted to achieve and we have certainly succeeded with that.”

Greater efficiency with the same number of people “We are working with the same number of people as before and achieving these results. I am 100% convinced that with the old way of working, and our growth, we would have had to hire several people to get here. So for us, there is a financial benefit as we can now handle more volume in a structured way with the same number of employees. That’s a big win!’

Case Study | Fruitful-Berries

3

Are you ready to learn more?

Discover how Aptean Food & Beverage ERP can transform your business.

Contact us at info@aptean.com or visit www.aptean.com.

About Aptean

Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of industry-specific software. Our enterprise resource planning and supply chain solutions are uniquely designed to meet the needs of specialized manufacturers and distributors, while our compliance solutions serve specific markets such as finance and life sciences. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes, across many industries, to scale and succeed.

For more information, visit www.aptean.com.

Copyright © Aptean 2023. All rights reserved.