• Integrating stock control and planning processes will result in huge efficiencies in the planning processes, which are largely manual at present. Better planning processes will also result in reduced inventory and/or a better level of customer service.
• Implementation of an integrated supplier extranet will allow suppliers to manage raw material inventory levels, resulting in major savings in material planning overhead.
• Implementation of web-based reporting, will allow information to be distributed around the company on a pull basis, rather than a push basis as is currently the case, resulting in greatly reduced paper flow and administration. Remote access to detailed sales information will also facilitate category managers in managing their customers.
• The implementation of electronic invoicing and payments will greatly reduce the effort in creditor administration.
• The implementation of a company intranet, with on-line training and links to the HR systems, will improve the personnel management processes.

5.6.2 Benefits for customers and suppliers

In addition, a number of benefits were projected for the customers and suppliers of C&D Foods:

• Most of the retail multiples operate an extranet through which Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) data is offered to suppliers. Currently this data is not being properly used because there is no way to integrate it into the existing systems.
• Sainsbury’s and Tesco both operate collaborative systems on their extranets for the planning of promotions. In future, C&D Foods will be required to use these as they reduce cost and improve customer service for the retailers.
• The design of labels for Own Label products is a laborious and paperbound process at present, often taking months to complete. In future, the multiples will wish to carry out this process over the web, using workflow and email.
• Many of the multiples are already insisting on electronic invoicing. In future, all customers will require this capability, either through EDI or Web-based XML.
• Many customers will want to have the capability to track stock and orders over the Web. This will be particularly important in the future, as customers demand 24-hour service.

5.7 Set backs and difficulties

There were a number of set backs and difficulties experienced during implementation.

1. Reporting problems –
   Due to the initial focus on working out the high level functionality of the ERP system (e.g. book-keeping and transaction processing) there were problems in providing user-level reports during this period. For example, C&D Foods did not have detailed management accounts for the five months from August to December 2001. Terry Carr suggested that, in his experience, the single biggest problem faced by those implementing an ERP solution is that of reporting.
   
   “I’ve done a straw poll of people who have put in ERP systems and poor reporting is the single biggest negative that comes out of it.”
   
   Whilst the database excels in handling all kinds of transactions the user is often disappointed by their inability to determine the format of the reports in the way that they have historically.
   
2. ‘ Guinea Pig’ customer -
   The supplier TASK only had one other site running their Task NG system in an Oracle database environment. The vast majority of their sites were still running in an SQL database environment. This meant that C&D Foods was to a large extent a ‘Guinea Pig’ customer and suffered a higher proportion of implementation problems than would have been the case otherwise. Jimmy commented as follows:
   
   “We ended up being the guinea pig and this caused us problems as the project proceeded.” Terry and Jimmy both stressed the need for other firms to check whether their supplier has prior experience of implementing a system in a particular environment.
   
3. Interfacing problems -
   C&D Foods suffered some difficulty in interfacing the TROPOS and Task NG product. The difficulty was on the TASK side of the interface. TASK was producing an interface based on XML. As this technology is relatively new it meant that there were delays as they encountered various difficulties as they attempted to move up the learning curve.
   
   

Jimmy commented as follows:

• The interfacing problem created a substantial cost for us in terms of time and effort.