Sales Adjustments for Midwest Bakery

In 2015, a 130-year-old privately owned bakery that serves commercial customers in the Midwest and across the country was struggling with its outdated route distribution system.

The bakery needs a three-day lead time to bake and deliver fresh product to restaurants and other retail outlets. Although orders were compiled and filled to the most efficient quantity, the sales locations, or depots, often added items to their initial orders to accommodate customer requests. The product is then shipped to the depots where all route orders are filled. Adjustments to the original orders (usually in the form of additional sales) were compiled and submitted to IT to be credited or charged along the route.

The bakery had concerns about allowing adjustments to be entered directly by delivery drivers via handheld devices. Instead, all route orders were manually keyed into the system and then inserted into the host ERP system, where adjustments are made to the route settlement.

Solution

After meeting with the client and collaborating to better understand their process, we implemented a solution to handle adjustments when they were called in along the route or after they were tracked on paper throughout the day. Our solution enabled very quick data-entry based on utilizing keyboard shortcuts instead of repetitive mouse movements and clicks. All the systems were consolidated so that data entry could be validated in real time. The solution also displays reports to see route adjustment transactions and summaries.

Impact

This small investment led to large dividends in terms of increased sales, fewer errors, and reduced product waste and loss and is still running seamlessly at the time of writing this case study.

Midwest Bakery

$21,000

About 2 months

Increased sales and operator time saved over the solution’s 8+ years of use

WPF, C#.NET, SQL Server