D & F McCarthy

 “McCarthy Increases Productivity using de Facto S5 ERP”

D & F McCarthy Ltd, a major UK fresh produce distribution company, has chosen de Facto as its accounting and business management system platform. The company has been able to streamline business processes and increase productivity using this powerful, yet flexible solution.

 Scenario – A Flexible And Accurate Stock-Focused Product Needed!

In 1996, McCarthy were involved in a search for a suitable financial and logistics solution to the company's growing and diverse needs. They spent several years evaluating systems to replace their outdated Sage accounting package, considering mainstream products along with specialist packages for the food industry.

Finding most systems to be either lacking specific features, or suffering from other drawbacks, their evaluation was that De Facto's ERP solution was the most comprehensive, flexible and rigorous system available for their line of business.

Martin McCarthy had a list of essential features and benefits to be provided by a new system, but most important was the ability to handle their fast-moving fresh fruit and vegetable trade and be flexible and accurate enough to process transactions as they wanted. The system had to be totally integrated and focus on the key element - stock. In their business they knew that if the system could get stock absolutely right, then everything else would fall into place. Accuracy of stock at all times was crucial.

The nature of their business means long working hours to ensure the freshest produce is provided. Orders are taken right up to 11pm for next day delivery, with staff working through the night to pick orders and load the lorries.

 A Challenging Implementation, Successfully concluded through Teamwork

McCarthy's faced a huge jump in going from their old systems to their new. They were moving from a DOS-based to a Windows solution. Where previously one person did all the order processing, now 6 people would input and process data. Most importantly they had a business with no lulls during the week, so the transition needed to be fast and effective. De Facto's implementation team worked alongside McCarthy's to make the transition as pain-free as possible. Running a test de Facto implementation alongside their old system for a short period provided an insight into several issues that would need to be dealt with. As a result of teamwork and dedication, the implementation and training period went through without major problems.

 De Facto’s Business Knowledge Yields Benefits For The Client

De Facto Software worked closely with D & F McCarthy to understand and analyse their working practices, thereby ensuring that the new system was implemented in the optimal fashion. As a result of the examination of the business and working practices, a number of areas for change and improvement were identified and actioned. Martin McCarthy said:

"This was a really useful exercise. Thanks to this careful scrutiny, we identified new business opportunities and changed our methods of operation to improve productivity. In fact, we've discovered that S5 provides us with a framework against which we can always measure our operations and processes. Without restricting us in any negative way, it provides us with a way to test ourselves against 'best practice'. We always ask ourselves "how would the system handle this" as a way of deciding how we should approach something new. Many times we've found more efficient or simpler ways of doing things which have come about through the rigours that the system imposes. You can't cheat the de Facto system, and that has to be good for controlling your business. We have absolute confidence in S5 and therefore use it as a driver of decisions about how we run our business, which has enabled us to continually move our business forward in an organised and controlled manner.

 S5's Superb Stock Handling at the Heart of our Business

Martin McCarthy shared his positive view of S5's stock handling: "In our line of business we need to know precisely what we've got at any one time. Stock handling is therefore at the heart of our business: it's the core. Complimenting this in S5, stock is the hub around which all S5's other processes and modules work. Our sales people need to be confident that when they take an order over the phone they know exactly what stock is there in the warehouse. We don't want to undersell or oversell a product whilst on the phone. We want customer satisfaction, so that means we have to have both accuracy and speed in our order taking process.

We sell our products in many different units of measure. Taking peppers as an example, we sell them by the box, by the kilo, by single peppers, and we can slice or dice them. We need to know that our stock is accurate sale by sale whichever way we sell them. Selling any unit of measure has its own impact on our stock, and S5 accurately updates it, in real-time.

Again, if we have damaged goods, or waste, or somehow the wrong product or quantity of product is delivered to us, then the system needs to handle this. S5's flexibility accommodates this, and with our systems in place S5 automatically adjusts our stock when we have those issues. Shortages, waste, returns, incorrect deliveries can all be tracked back through de Facto S5 - we have complete confidence in the accuracy of the system. In our business you could say that stock never behaves itself. It's not like tins of baked beans! Stock can deteriorate overnight, and stock often comes in incorrectly, but S5 takes it all in its stride."

Powerful Price List Features de Facto's Price List features were one of the powerful features that really stood out for them. Martin McCarthy explains: "Price lists are a key feature of the de Facto system. The way that de Facto S5 handles multiple price lists, and gives us the ability to offer and match prices lists to particular customers is very powerful. Fresh Produce price fluctuate daily, and as a result, S5's ability to manipulate prices lists both easily and quickly has been a boon. We can act on any changes in the market straightaway, with prices being updated and filtered through to all customers automatically if we want to.

We have a very broad range of customers and S5 enables us to handle our pricing appropriately across that range. At the top end we have the high volume, low margin wholesalers, supermarkets and big retailers and at the other end the very demanding catering trade with lower volumes, but, necessarily, higher margins.

 Working With McCarthy's To Deliver Beyond Expectations

De Facto Software always work closely with their clients throughout the process to produce the best possible results. McCarthy have found their expectations have been met in all respects, and have been exceeded in many areas. Martin said this about his long term partnership with De Facto: "There's always more there in S5 for us to take on and implement in our business - it's so feature-rich. We are absolutely confident that it'll never run out of steam. However fast our business develops, or wherever we turn in business activities, de Facto S5 can always keep up. It wouldn't be going too far to say that it has played a major role in the expansion of our business because it allows us to keep control not only of the operation of our business, and by that I mean the whole process from buying to selling to picking to loading and, finally, to dispatch; but also control over the financial and administrative areas that can easily be forgotten in the push for new business."

 Helping The Client Continues Long After Implementation

The on-going service De Facto provides is extensive. On-line and hotline support is provided from within an annual contract. The contract keeps D & F McCarthy, and all other customers, up-to-date with the latest version of the de Facto software, ensuring they keep pace with technological advancements and enhancements to the package. McCarthy's have found that they need to draw on the help of De Facto's support department with decreasing regularity over time. In the early days there were questions about how to do things, but as knowledge increased these diminished greatly. Martin added:

"The ultimate recommendation we can give is that we have never yet failed to get out our orders on time. In our business we operate 6 and a half days a week, and 20 hours a day. We simply can't afford to lose any sale or any delivery. In ten years of operating with de Facto at the heart of our business, it's never let us down. This reliability is ultimately valuable to us."