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AIA

LinkFresh system tracks produce delivery and costs

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18th May 2005
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Cambridge-based IT house Anglia Business Solutions has launched a specialist companion application for Microsoft Business Solutions Navision that allows fruit and veg suppliers to track their products from the field to the shelves of their retail customers.

Called LinkFresh, the supply chain system is notable for the way it pushes Navision and Microsoft's mobile computing technologies to their limits. Using mobile phones and handheld devices, radio communications and global positioning by satellite, LinkFresh allows the core Navision system to receive and publish data about crops as they progress from harvest to sale.

Anglia has already implemented similar remote supply chain systems for the electrical components industry. But looking around at the agricultural industry in East Anglia, managing director David Hurley saw the potential for a similar system that would meet the needs of the produce companies that act as "category managers" for major retail chains. These companies take total responsibility for sourcing and supplying particular products such as potatoes or carrots to their clients.

"The fresh produce industry operates on very tight margins and needs to keep a tight handle on costs and wastes," said Hurley. "They need to monitor their buying costs and know which growers give them the best yield and margins. If they are 1% out on their estimates, they can lose money. In many cases, the finance teams use spreadsheets for these calculations, but they cannot always trust the results they get."

Anglia has worked with its customers' finance teams to help them identify and configure the performance measures they want to get out of LinkFresh. Customers, growers and products are assigned to separate Navision Dimensions, so Navision's Report Writer can dynamically extract key performance indicators (KPIs) such as produce quality, wastage, delivery times and profit by grower/customer from the ERP database. SharePoint Portal Server links back to the data in SQL Server's Analysis Services and presents the KPI figures through Web portals configured for harvest managers, sales people, warehouse staff and delivery drivers.

LinkFresh uses the full range of Navision's ERP suite and features new fields and industry-specific adaptations to the Financials, Inventory, Manufacturing, Distribution, Warehouse and CRM modules. The mobile client devices support data input, so orders are received and processed without manual re-keying. Individual pallets of produce can be tracked by satellite as they progress through the supply chain to the store.

One of the early customers for LinkFresh is Natures Way Marketing, which has installed a 30-user LinkFresh system at distribution centre in Chichester.

Natures Way managing director Stephen Barnes commented: "We recognised that our old IT systems represented a barrier for the growth of the business. We had a variety of disparate systems in operation which were becoming difficult and expensive to maintain. We wanted a fully integrated and proven solution not only to accommodate our current needs, but also to grow with us. Crucially, we needed dynamic access to accurate financial information on product and customer trends."

Further reading

  • Microsoft Business Solutions Download Library
  • Reseller Channel
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