Barbara’s Bakery Gets Cookin’ with Navision and SCS

Natural Food Marketer and Producer Streamlines System on Microsoft Navision

Barbara’s Bakery, a well-known maker of all-natural cereals and snacks, has been a Navision customer for two years. In business since 1971, Barbara’s manufactures and distributes their branded products in the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, Barbara’s contract manufactures snack products for other companies that are widely distributed throughout the U.S. and internationally.   

As a leader in the ever-growing organic food industry, Barbara’s Bakery was quickly outgrowing their previous software system. Running a 10-year old, AS400 platform-based system that was both inflexible and inefficient, with extremely limited production and inventory functionality, the challenge was before them: find software that would allow the company to streamline production, inventory, sales and all financials into one solid system. Barbara’s needed a true ERP system.

The search, including applications such as AccPac and Agilisys, was quickly reduced to a final five – which included several vertical solutions made specifically for the food processing industry. However, even these solutions were found lacking in terms of their immediate fit for Barbara’s needs.

“Since no single solution had it all, it was critical to have a system that was easily modified,” said Jeff von Raesfeld, Corporate Project Manager at Barbara’s Bakery. “Navision was not only customizable, but the development tools were also available to us to make changes as we see fit down the line,” he added.

The inflexibility of the other systems, coupled with their lack in MRP functionality, strong reporting and analysis, Microsoft compatibility, and even price competitiveness, made Navision the clear winner. 

Additionally, Barbara’s had a long-term IT vision that required a highly scalable system that would include CRM, advanced reporting, supply chain management (SCM), and performance management.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBreakxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And having a long-term vision meant picking a vendor who would be around a long time as well. They found that in Microsoft and SCS.

Barbara’s is doing a phased-implementation of Navision. The first phase was primarily financials, sales orders and purchase orders. “Phase I of the implementation was one of the best I'd been involved in,” commented Dave Weber, Vice President of Finance and Administration at Barbara’s Bakery.

Phase II, which incorporates warehouse management and production scheduling, is currently in progress. At the close of this phase Barbara’s will be able to use Navision to greatly simplify the process of tracking raw materials from door to finished product by lot, a vital requirement in the food industry, and conduct detailed planning for production and material requirements. The last phase will tie in CRM and advanced report writing functionality.  
 

Barbara’s Bakery has already gone through an upgrade, which also went well. “Son Vo [SCS Programmer] made our upgrade a clean process,” stated Dave Weber. “Between the expertise he brought, and our thorough testing, it went far better than we expected,” added Jeff von Raesfeld. 

SCS project management as a whole has been top-notch, according to Barbara’s. “SCS has proven to be a very strong, capable and professional group of people,” said Jeff von Raesfeld. 

Even after the timely completion of just one phase of the implementation, Dave Weber was prompted to say that “SCS and Navision have produced significant efficiencies to Barbara’s Bakery.” Something they view as mandatory as they continue to develop their world-class system.