United Food Group Grinding Out Growth with SCS and Navision

One Of Country’s Premier Food Processors Supplies Thousands with Microsoft Navision  

United Food Group, LLC, one of the country’s major meat processors, has been an SCS customer since 1999. With approximately 400 different fresh and frozen ground beef products for the retail and food service markets, United Food Group is one of the largest manufacturers of ground beef products in the nation.

Headquartered in a 180,000 square foot state-of-the-art food processing facility in Los Angeles, California, United Food Group operates under three distinct entities for their retail, wholesale and food service markets. Over 500 employees research, develop, produce and inspect products that supply a number of major national fast food chains, restaurants and grocery stores, making them the largest processor of ground beef in the United States under one roof.

As Y2K approached, United Food Group began searching for a new system, hiring an outside accounting firm for preliminary evaluations and recommendations. They had not only outgrown their previous system, but they were faced with increasing regulations in the food processing industry that would require greater reporting and tracking capabilities.

The accountant first came across Navision at a Business and Accounting Software Expo where he witnessed what he referred to as an “impressive” on the spot Navision demo by SCS President Helen Russell. He issued an RFP to SCS and included Navision in the final round along with other packages, including Macola and MAS 90. Navision easily came out on top because of the system’s flexibility and the advanced technology demonstrated through the designer tools and its rich functionality.

“The system is very adaptable, easy to program and easy to troubleshoot,” commented United Food Group Controller, Dayle Makishima, who has worked with several accounting systems in her career, including other system conversions. From her role as the Manager of the United Food Group system conversion, she added that

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SCS’s Navision implementation was “much simpler than I ever expected. We did all the design and prep and started programming just one month before going live, and we went live on time and in budget.”

Dayle Makishima attributes the success of the implementation back in July 1999 to the ease with which Navision can be tailored to suit a company’s business. “It took very little and relatively simple programming to get the system suited to us. When I asked Don Saito [SCS Vice President of Operations] for a particular change, he would say, ‘give me five minutes.’ And, surprisingly, he always managed to do it!”

And Dayle knows whereof she speaks. She has been involved in AS400 and custom package conversions that she said did not compare to the Navision implementation. “Our Navision implementation was much simpler and faster,” she noted. “The entire implementation took less than two months.” 

What system improvements have they noticed at United Food Group? “We have implemented various granules to handle different parts of our business that weren’t previously handled by our accounting system, like packaging – which is now handled with ease,” said Dayle. “Payables, sales, production data are all handled well by Navision,” she remarked.

“We have had no problems with Navision accommodating the significant growth we have experienced over the past five years,” concluded Dayle. And after a recent upgrade, United Foods is working on expanding their solution even further to promote continued improvements to efficiency.