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John Lester Foods Case Study - (235KB)


	Customer Profile
	John Lester Foods supplies dry, tinned, and chilled foods to caterers, hotels etc in the UK. They also supply groceries, ingredients and drinks, and stock chilled and non-food lines. Based in South London, John Lester Foods operate out of two warehouses and adjoining offices. Their warehouses consist of bulk storage, racking and chilling facilities. They run a fleet of vehicles throughout England and Wales. John Lester provides both food service and bulk delivery, including multiple pallet and full container load drops. Their Quality Assurance systems are fully documented, and are audited and approved by STS.

Key Achievements

•	Real-time actual costings implementation has enabled John Lester Foods to flourish in a highly competitive marketplace.
•	S5's powerful and easy to use reporting facilities enable efficient on phone trading with customers.
•	Accurate picking enabled a reduction in missed picks, and therefore reduced costs and happier customers.



		John Lester Foods

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John Lester Foods

“ ERP for a Fast Turnaround Wholesale Business ”

As a long established wholesaler of catering ingredients, John Lester Foods supplies ambient, chilled and frozen goods throughout the UK. Previously running a Unix-based Financials and Logistics system, they were finding the cost of system support becoming increasingly prohibitive. With inflexible pricing facilities and other limitations, John Lester Foods decided to source a new integrated ERP system which would complement and maximise their particular business practices and strengths. As such, de Facto S5's powerful facilities stood clear above the competition, and a rapid implementation to meet year end deadlines showed De Facto's services to be an equally valuable part of the overall solution.

John Lester Foods

When Price is King!

For many of John Lester Foods products, their customers are not especially interested in brands or trade names. To that end 'pricing is king', and rather like in commodity trading, John Lester Foods need to know exactly what they have got, know its current price and need to get that product out to the customer with the least possible delay. Their scenario is one where fast turnaround of orders and next day delivery are musts. With a host of companies seeking to supply alternatives, John Lester Foods have found S5 to be the ideal system to give them the edge they need in a highly competitive environment. The introduction of S5 has enabled them to implement actual costings rather than standard costings, which is vital in rapidly fluctuating cost markets, and which underlies their competitive edge when trading with relatively low margin products.

Easy Reporting and Seamless Interfacing

In the industry, much has been made of S5's powerful and innovative reporting facilities. Built on a standard setting platform, and fully utilising ODBC open database standards, John Lester Foods have benefited greatly in their prime area of on-phone trading. S5's ODBC configuration has enabled John Lester Foods to utilise Microsoft Access to provide instant pricing information to customers over the phone.

The seamless interface between the two means that they can use Access as a live onscreen tool. They can edit or annotate the data at any stage, and the altered data is automatically updated in S5. Being able to build a specific view of their data in S5 which suits their trading methods and is therefore very specific to their business is part of the solutions extraordinary flexibility. This combination of reporting and live onscreen tools ensures that John Lester Foods can respond to their customers as they want, whether it is in terms of the lowest available price, or of optimum price / quality combination.

Customer Service - Accurate Picking and Stock Control

As a result of more accurate stock tracking with S5, John Lester Foods are able to carry out more accurate picking. And that leads directly to happier customers, as de Facto S5 has enabled them to deliver the right thing at the right time. As any business knows, mispicks are expensive. You have to get the stock back, investigate the problem, issue credit notes - there are huge costs involved as well as unhappy customers.

With S5's powerful warehouse management facilities, stock control is much tighter throughout John Lester Foods multiple warehouses. Being able to always supply when they have the goods, instead of potentially missing sales opportunities is an obvious benefit of more accurate stock control. Instant pricing, accurate stock control and easy reporting - all these and more demonstrate S5's role in supporting John Lester Foods drive for superlative customer service.

With a happy customer at the heart of each company's business model, this partnership between De Facto Software and John Lester Foods looks set to thrive for years to come.

Customer Profile

John Lester Foods supplies dry, tinned, and chilled foods to caterers, hotels etc in the UK. They also supply groceries, ingredients and drinks, and stock chilled and non-food lines.

Based in South London, John Lester Foods operate out of two warehouses and adjoining offices. Their warehouses consist of bulk storage, racking and chilling facilities. They run a fleet of vehicles throughout England and Wales. John Lester provides both food service and bulk delivery, including multiple pallet and full container load drops. Their Quality Assurance systems are fully documented, and are audited and approved by STS.

Key Achievements

•	Real-time actual costings implementation has enabled John Lester Foods to flourish in a highly competitive marketplace.
•	S5's powerful and easy to use reporting facilities enable efficient on phone trading with customers.
•	Accurate picking enabled a reduction in missed picks, and therefore reduced costs and happier customers.

Call us now to find out how de Facto S5 can deliver a powerful, flexible and easy to use solution to your business system needs! - 01473 417200