Quality control and traceability are more important than ever in the food industry. BIC Services, producer of soy flour and lecithin knows all about that. That's why the company chose SAP Business One in combination with ProcessForce. "Only now that it's up and running do you see how much more you can do with the system," he says.

BIC Services produces and supplies soy flour as an ingredient to major food companies. The ingredient is used for human food, as well as for animal feed and in the pharmaceutical industry.

Customers are located in Europe, as well as worldwide. Besides its own production, BIC is also an importer of lecithin, a vegetable raw material used in chocolate, among other things. This raw material is standardized, packaged and distributed in the Netherlands.

ProcessForce

Speaking is Saskia Brokx, account manager at BIC Services. She was the one who supervised the implementation of SAP Business One and ProcessForce at BIC in 2017. "Previously, we worked with various software packages, all of which in turn required maintenance and data import. In the long run, such a situation is of course untenable. Especially now that we are growing significantly as a company every year."

In the long run, of course, the situation with all those separate software packages was untenable.

BIC Services went looking for software built specifically for manufacturers and ended up with ProcessForce. "ProcessForce has exactly those functionalities in it that you want as a producer: a well-developed quality control module, traceability, production planning, warehouse management...".

Schedule met

Logres was a logical choice as ProcessForce's Dutch partner, and the combination with SAP Business One was also obvious. There was an immediate click.

"Logres simply has some very good consultants running around with a lot of expertise. Within three quarters of a year we had our new ERP system set up and equipped, all the data imported and the necessary links made with external software that could not yet be replaced. We went live entirely on schedule on January 1. Since then, the system has been running without any significant problems."

Batchpricing

Leading up to the live date, there were a few hurdles to overcome - as in any journey. "We found out that batch pricing was not set up in a way we would prefer to use. We do a lot of operations on a batch and want to have a good understanding of what this does to its cost. It required a lot of switching with Logres and the software builders before this was set up exactly the way we wanted it. It's great that this finally worked out."

For the Batch Pricing module, we were provided with a piece of custom setup.

The setup and use of SAP Business One, on the other hand, was another windfall. "This system works very intuitively. It is not really difficult for us to create new queries with which we can compare data and arrive at new insights. Really nice that this system is so user-friendly."

Wish List

Now that SAP Business One has been in use for about two years, Brokx observes that the system has done things right. "We have much more insight than before. Before, we could only see at the end of the quarter what the previous quarter had brought. Now we can see real-live the current financial situation. That's quite an improvement!"

Being able to view the financial situation real-live is quite an improvement!

However, Brokx still sees plenty of new opportunities that remained untapped until now. "Well, once a system like this is up and running you only really see what you can do with it, he ... Actually, since the implementation we have continued to develop continuously.

Our company still has a lot of professionalization to do! For example, we are currently running a project to import QC data into SAP. The wish list still includes production planning and MRP planning."

Doing it yourself

The account manager is pleased with working with Logres. "The consultants really think with you and are able to master our difficult business in a short time. That's a compliment in itself. What I like is that they help us to really make the system our own, so that we create and solve many things ourselves. And do we not succeed? Then the support desk is quickly called..."

BIC Services uses the following software:

• SAP Business One HANA
• ProcessForce
• Boyum B1 Usability Package
• Boyum Print & Delivery
• Boyum CRM for Outlook