Nene Valley Foods Limited

Specialist producer of dairy products

Company Overview

Nene Valley Foods Nene Valley Foods was founded in 1993. It initially produced retail packs of milk and dairy products for a number of regional dairies from a facility on the outskirts of Peterborough, as well as dairy ingredients for its major manufacturing customers.

In June 1997, a controlling interest in the company was acquired by The Milk Group (which has since become Diary Farmers of Britain) and a program of investment and product development has followed to broaden the company’s product range and increase its sales volumes significantly. In 1999, at a cost of around £5 million, the company relocated to a two acre Green Fields site and new purpose built facilities at Fengate.

The specialist dairy is capable of handling up to 100 million litres per annum and is designed to meet the stringent production and hygiene standards required by leading customers as well as achieving fast response times.

The facility offers a complete high risk - low risk product separation capability and has received full audit clearance from its major customers and leading retailers, such as Marks and Spencer.The production site itself has also achieved full accreditation under the BRC Good Manufacturing Practice audit scheme.

Addressing the Software Issue

Joe Fisher, Financial Controller, joined the business in 1998. One of his first challenges was to source new equipment and software systems for the new site, and to ensure millennium compatibility.The company previously used TAS Books, but found that the software did not offer an adequate solution for the fast paced business that Nene Valley operates in.

Having worked extensively in the area of systems development, Joe had a good grounding with which to attend a Softworld show and to quickly narrow the field of software that would be suitable for the business. “It was always my intention to choose software that we could grow into, rather than grow out of,” he says.“The two main aspects that I was looking for from a new system were resilience and intuitiveness. Firstly, due to the very nature of our business, system downtime can be detrimental so it was essential to select a solution with a robust platform for the business. Secondly, our staff at the time were not very computer literate and as a result I was looking for an intuitive system that was designed for a Windows platform. I quickly eliminated many providers whose offering had a Windows front end but was essentially still a Dos based system.”

He continues,“Access Accounting offered a mid range solution that could be upgraded to suit the size of the company as it grew. I immediately liked the commonality across the modules – if you knew how to use one, you could use them all.”

Committing to the Project

Having selected an Access solution, Joe put an implementation plan together. “From past experience, I know that in order for the project to succeed, there needs to be a level of commitment from both parties,” he comments.“I worked closely with our Access Specialist Centre to prepare for the implementation – we spent quite a lot of time on preparation between us and it paid off.The implementation was very smooth – extraordinarily so, as far as software implementations are concerned!”

The solution was implemented in February 1999, and went live at the beginning of the new financial year on 1st April. Joe comments,“The specialist centre came in twice for training purposes – the first time was to give a brief overview of the system, and the second time was more focused on modules that we would be using on an every day basis.With an average of less than one days training per user, we were up and running.”

Joe describes the benefits of the solution: “Primarily, life is much easier.We produce weekly accounts as well as monthly to give us early warning of anything that is amiss.This is very important for Nene Valley; if you get anything wrong with milk processing it can be a very costly business.Also, the availability of information is so good. I can pull out everything that I need and never have to leave the office!”

The Price Matrix functionality available within Dimensions allows Nene Valley to price customer – product combinations individually. Joe adds “A minor modification means that when an order is entered onto the system, the stock list displays only the price matrix codes valid for that customer – this saves us time as with our previous system, the wrong codes were constantly being selected.” Powering Business Growth Joe speaks very highly of Access Specialist Centre.“They are a naturally helpful organisation - without doubt one of the best solutions providers I have dealt with.”

“We could never have grown from a £9 million turnover business to a £22 million turnover business without Dimensions. If we hadn’t made the transition at that time, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Dimensions has enabled us to grow from a small company to a medium sized business, and even if we doubled in size, Dimensions would easily cope, without many more staff.”

Joe concludes,“We have gone from a situation where Dimensions was seen as ‘the Accounts Department’s system’. Now, almost every department uses it – planners use the order book to forecast milk and cream procurement, the lab uses it to produce delivery lists from which they can generate Certificates of Analysis for our products – Dimensions underpins the whole business.”

Benefits

Scalable software - to grow into, rather than out of
Designed for Windows platform - intuitive and familiar
Commonality across modules - minimum training required
Price Matrix functionality - enables Nene Valley to price customer product combinations individually
Used in almost every department- bringing business-wide benefits
Highly qualified and professional specialist centre