A few years ago JR Wholesale Meats managed its I.T. needs in-house through independent contractors and the company’s information was stored outside its control on the cloud in Australia. The butchery pick-and-pack processes to fulfil customer orders and organise delivery were manual.
Managing Director Stan Murphy described the first step in his I.T. transformation strategy as moving all JR Wholesale Meats’ sensitive files and information to a locally managed private cloud.
“BTG organised the transition to their private cloud providing stable and secure I.T. infrastructure to support the business. This included upgrading JR Wholesale Meats’ network for better performance and increased reliability,” Bay of Plenty Business Development Manager Ted Ebbing says.
JR Wholesale Meats also chose to switch the consultancy agency for its Accredo accounting software, so Zeal Systems became the second partner in this I.T. collaboration.
Next up was the challenge of bringing Stan’s digital order management system design to life.
Zeal developed and implemented the automation project to streamline the pick-and-pack function for the huge variety of cuts the meat processor provides to chefs and other customers.
The result is four industrial pick-and-pack stations where Stan’s team now collects meat to order, weighs it on digital scales, labels for delivery, prints an invoice and books the courier company. Multiple orders can be handled simultaneously and the automated system, built from scratch by Zeal, integrates with Accredo.
The automation introduced a lot of efficiencies. “We now have increased throughput, more accuracy, 100% visibility, automation with our downstream logistics providers, track and trace, and automation of both our invoice generation and sending,” Stan says.
“We are able to process more orders quicker and to a higher degree of accuracy. The third-party logistics provider now sees our order destinations as we generate the orders. We’ve grown the business over 200% during the last four years,” he says.
The new way of working has reduced stress for the packing team and created space in the facility in Otahuhu, South Auckland. An area previously needed for staging ahead of delivery has been repurposed now that orders are collected and delivered faster.
BTG was instrumental in ensuring a secure data transfer for business continuity. Now the partnership is focused on remote and face-to-face I.T. support 24/7, providing business grade Internet, wifi and managed services, procurement of PCs and other hardware, as well as hosting JR Wholesale Meats’ four servers among its three data centres in Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch.
“BTG’s work has been incredibly enabling for our business. The partnership works really well. When we have issues I can get hold of somebody. When I want to be able to do something that we can’t do in-house simply, BTG is always there to put it together for us and make it happen,” Stan says.
“We get really good support from Zeal – they are a superior provider of Accredo services without a doubt,” he says.
“It was satisfying to have the pick and pack system running smoothly from day one of the go live and to have a seamless transition from manual to computerised processes,” Zeal Senior System Consultant Dylan Larsen says.
“The engagement of the JR Wholesale Meats staff was awesome. The team involved in using the new system universally approved and were quick to adopt it as it allowed them to better perform their jobs.”
“Within weeks the productivity had eclipsed the previous system. Overall JR Wholesale Meats now has a greater capacity for sales order throughput. As this system is scalable, they will be able to grow their business without having a productivity bottleneck such as what occurred with the previous system,” Dylan says.
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