Giving customers something to smile about

With the reasons to replace legacy systems growing as fast as their business, an award-winning wholesale bakery chose Abel® to automate workflows, provide real-time data, and drive greater efficiency and quality control in one ERP system.

Anyone with a sweet tooth has likely heard of the Original Foods Baking Co. or tasted their cakes, muffins or one of the 70,000 donuts they make every day.

From humble beginnings in 1991, supplying donuts to local takeaway stores, Original Foods has grown into a multimillion-dollar, large-scale bakery manufacturer based in Wigram, Christchurch with over 100 products.

They’re a proud leading name in the New Zealand baking industry, and their treats can be found in major supermarkets and food service distributors across New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.

Despite all this growth, the award-winning Christchurch company retains the fun and cheeky personality of a start-up. Their tasty treats are marketed creatively with colourful branding, and their logo features Ollie, a cheeky smiling monkey licking his lips.

“We still pride ourselves on quality products and delivering a fresh, home-baked taste in everything we make,” says CFO Tracey McMenamin. “We’re just making more of them now.”

Tonnes more, it turns out. Every week 80 tonnes of dough and other ingredients are mixed, baked and packaged at their purpose-built facility, using the latest production technologies and automation.

But until recently, Tracey says, the business was missing one critical ingredient: a robust, integrated ERP system to streamline operations and comply with food safety standards and regulations mandated by the Ministry of Primary Industries.

“Our old ERP system was limited and lacked integration, and we had become extremely dependent on manual processes,” she says.

“Spreadsheets were a big problem. There’s no data integrity when multiple people are using and editing them. Sometimes if I needed to update a spreadsheet, I had to go into another user’s office while they were out and turn off their computer.”

Another impetus for a new ERP system was the risk of a costly product recall or quality issue, which are often difficult to isolate and manage using manual systems.

“Paper systems don’t give you the confidence to respond quickly or accurately,” Tracey says. “That’s a big risk for any food manufacturer, especially if you have a large range of products and ingredients. We knew we needed real-time visibility and traceability across our supply chain.”

Another Christchurch food manufacturer had recommended Abel, but Original Foods looked at several other systems before choosing Abel in 2024.

“The Abel team was awesome to deal with from the beginning,” Tracey says. “Our business is complicated, but they were willing to focus on the nitty-gritty to get it right.”

Abel’s first fundamental improvement was automated batch tracking. Abel uses a system of bar-coded labels, printed with batch numbers and best-before dates, to track every ingredient and product in the Original Foods range. This provides full traceability and quality control from the raw materials to the dispatched goods.

“Whether for a recall or a safety audit, it’s a big relief to have a system we can trust to manage problems and mitigate risks for our business,” she says.

Tracey admits the transition to a new system hasn’t always been a piece of cake, especially on the production floor.

“Everyone is loving it now, but the process exposed problems we didn’t know we had,” she says, adding wryly, “Let’s say, we were spoiled with opportunities to improve.”

One such area was inventory management. Before Abel, stock takes were conducted manually once a month, but there was no certainty the data was accurate and in-depth analysis was difficult. But now ingredient usage is precisely captured on the production floor via touch screens and scanners, delivering real-time visibility of stock levels.

With Abel, Tracey and other managers can accurately track raw material levels and analyse manufacturing variances, yields and other critical data at any time. At first, the data they saw was not good.

“We discovered our efficiency levels were nothing like we thought,” Tracey says. “We had a higher rate of raw material usage and a greater amount of waste. But Abel has helped us address these problems and we’ve become so much more efficient. We’ve also worked to get staff more involved in the process, and they are seeing the difference Abel can make.”

Abel has also helped simplify their Customer Order entry with an automated solution from Abel Associate Acume.

Tracey says Abel has reduced costs and errors, shrunk cycle times and improved cash flow.

As any financial controller will attest, access to accurate and timely data is a game-changer. Tracey is no exception. She says Abel has made her job easier, providing a real-time view of all the consolidated and detailed financial information she needs to prepare accurate financial statements, manage risks and gain valuable insights into the company’s performance.

“Sometimes you don’t think you need to change systems until you do it,” she says. “Now that we have done it, we certainly see a lot of light ahead.”

Original Foods Abel implementation was just the start. Tracey rattles off a list of Abel functionality that they could adopt next, including automated production scheduling; seamless integrations with third-party logistics (3PL) providers; and adopting Abel BI, Abel’s interactive suite of graphical business intelligence reports in Microsoft® Power BI®.