Bake Five

Bake Five: hassle-free and quick switch to a new EDI solution provides more insight

Everyone takes it for granted that fresh bread and pastries are available in the supermarket every day. To achieve that, a lot happens behind the scenes in a very short period of time. This is a very complex and precise process with no room for errors. OMS International has helped Bake Five with an EDI system that makes these complex processes run smoothly and without problems.

“We are not an average EDI user,” says Robert Vooren of Bake Five. “Our products are fresh baked, every day. Our challenge is to ensure that new, fresh products are on the shelves every day at many of the well-known supermarket chains in the Netherlands. That means ordering products today, producing them today and tomorrow they will be on the supermarket shelves.” The leeway in the whole process is very limited. Half an hour late arrival of an order means that order can not be produced that day.

At the beginning of 2018, Bake Five and OMS got in touch. Bake five then used two EDI providers, each with their own “tasks”, one of which was very outdated. To meet the requirements of the dynamic fresh market, Bake Five was looking for an EDI solution with flexibility, good monitoring properties, high performance and a partner with a high service level.

Most important criteria

Important points in the search for a suitable solution were costs and technical support. In addition, it was important that the solution had to work with AFAS without any problem, because many of the affiliated bakeries work with AFAS software. After a consultancy round in which an extensive inventory has been made and the possible solutions have been indicated, Bake Five has opted for the ODEX solution in combination with the Managed Services of OMS International. With this, Bake Five has gone from 2 service providers to 1 provider, that also offers technical support.

Switch

Bake Five is a partnership of independent industrial bakeries in the Netherlands. They deliver fresh bread and pastries to many supermarkets, wholesalers and food service formulas every day. As with any change, not everyone at Bake Five was positive about innovation. “A number of our bakeries were afraid of the switch, because when something goes wrong we have a lot of misery,” Robert explains. “The orders that come in have to be split between the different bakeries. After the orders have been divided and taken into production, the entire logistics and administrative part follows. A complex process where many things come very closely. But in the end, the people who work with it did not notice the switch. ”

Complex process

OMS Consultant Raymond Lamers explains: “Bake Five has many different trading partners, some of which work with their own specific data sets. All incoming orders must be split within seconds and communicated to the different partners. At the same time, all this must be recorded in AFAS. And then the consolidation of orders, taking care of packing slips and invoices for the various supermarkets, means a complex process with a narrow time frame”.

ODEX allows messages – such as orders, invoices and packing slips – to be exchanged securely and quickly, regardless of the different file formats and communication protocols.

Cooperation

Robert says about the collaboration between OMS and Bake Five: “It is nice to work with a dedicated team. The short communication lines and involvement of OMS are very pleasant. This made the cooperation and communication easy.” As with almost every project, a few things in this project appeared that had not been taken into account or were not anticipated. Thanks to the flexibility and knowledge of OMS, these “bumps” could be solved quickly and properly, so that the project could be delivered according to plan within a short time.

Now that the transition is over, Robert looks back with satisfaction. “The new solution is really easy to work with and offers us more insight. What did not go well in the process was immediately resolved by OMS”. The Managed Services that Bake Five now uses are very good. Robert says about it: “I have good insights via the management tool. I can see which and how many messages are coming in. If a problem pops up, OMS ensures that it is solved immediately. ”

Future

Bake Five is are already looking ahead. “Now that we have completed the transition from our bakeries to the new system, we are going to see if we can improve on the purchasing side,” says Robert. “Also connecting suppliers can be done more efficient, because the invoicing of Bake Five is already completely digitalised”.