Date published Tue 23rd Nov'10
Baking a Storm
We are delighted that award-winning craft bakers Reid’s of Caithness have demonstrated their confidence in Merit by launching into a fast-track SOM implementation. Director Gary Reid says:
“We have been buoyed by our recent successes, not just in the recent local and national awards, but by our steady sales growth. We need SOM to help us control our orders and production while keeping efficient and productive – that’s the only way to keep providing first-class service to our customers”.
Reid’s chose the option to receive product training remotely via the web, the benefits being training can be tailor made to individuals or groups as and when staff become available during the day. Merit have quickly migrated Reid’s spreadsheet-based customer, product and price file data. One key feature Reid’s require will be the interface to Bartender Label Printing Software, which will automatically load production figures, best-before dates, EANs and ingredients.
Web-Based Food Management System – FMSNET
Further progress has been made on the FMS.Net module, with significant improvements in the management reports which have also been moved into the SOM Web Till Sales menu, so they are available centrally, not just on the web. The specific reports are:
- Potential Lost Sales (require sales data from the till)
- Sales Discrepancies Report (require sales data from the till)
- Unnecessary Wastage Report
- Returns History Report
- Stock Position Report
These reports close the loop between shop ordering, deliveries to the shops and shop sales, allowing efficiencies and losses to be identified and turned into sales opportunities.
Two Brand-New Modules Launched (Optional to the core SOM application)
In a recent newsletter we referred to ongoing developments to interface SOM to electronic weigh-scales applications, specifically the Stevens Vantage system, this has now been completed. Reference was also made to creating the Purchase Invoice Matching (“PIM”) module that integrates with purchase ordering and good inwards this project has also been completed PIM is now in Beta test with the sponsor. Several other SOM users have expressed great interest in realising the benefits of both these modules and are expected to start using them in the near future.
Stevens Weigh Scale Datasheet Purchase Invoice Matching Datasheet
McGhee’s Phase II
In April 2010 one of the UK’s largest independent bakers D McGhee and Son Ltd, went live with the largest SOM implementation to date.
Group Financial Director Harry McKerral says:
“We needed to move away from our old 100% bespoke technology and SOM is the package we selected to allow us to keep control of all the various ways we process orders – telesales, van sales, standing orders, EDI, local authorities – the list seems endless! And there’s more efficiency to come such as developing our own reports in Access and Excel, as well as by reducing paperwork through e-mailing of invoices, statements etc. Yes we have had some teething problems, as would be expected from such a large and complex project, but these are largely behind us and we now need to move onto next phase”.
Now planning is well underway for phase II, which will involve purchasing, ingredient traceability, recipe costing and production control.
COBS to SOM Migration
Congratulations to Cooplands of Scarborough, who successfully migrated to SOM in September. Along the way they requested a number of important enhancements, including:
- Screen highlights when changing standing orders
- Displaying H & S data on the recipe notes screen
- Marking exceptional orders on packing sheets with an “(e)”
These modifications are now standard within SOM, each of you will receive them on your next system update.
After the first week the telesales team were happy to report that the overall time taken to process shop orders for their 98 shops, from order entry through “shorts and over’s” to invoice printing, is now less than it used to be in COBS. SOM has given them a stronger platform towards obtaining increased efficiency across the board which includes end-to-end processing, full implementation of recipes and management reporting.
More new features added in the last quarter ....
Never standing still, we have added even more features to make the SOM user experience easier and more efficient. Aside from many minor changes and additions to the reports formats (as seen on our latest SOM Reports Formats PDF file, downloadable here
We’ve added new extras functionality to:
- Driver Cash Postings
- Purchase Invoice Matching
- EDI
- Pricing
Driver Cash Posting – Batch-Allocation
A further change to Driver Cash Postings has been driven by D & D Dairies. This allows the cash to be entered, totalled and posted on, say Saturday, and then mass-allocated on say Tuesday, i.e. after the weekly invoices have been finally raised. Since it involves around two hundred accounts, this saves the admin staff at least an hour every week and reduces the chances of errors and omissions.
Purchase Invoice Matching – Debit Notes and Purchase Ledger interface
As a further enhancement to this recently launched module, we have added the facility to raise a debit note, even in the case where there was no original invoice or PO, and have delivered the Purchase Ledger export. A future enhancement over the next quarter will be to allow VAT analysis for up to four rates and to define default Nominal Ledger codes per ingredient.
EDI Export History, Invoice Extras and Order Date Control
There have been a number of enhancements is this area to improve control of EDI invoicing and orders.
SOM has always had the facility to store EDI invoice/credit transmission history as a csv file. This has now been enhanced so that EDI transmission history is recorded against each invoice, with a history screen for on-line interrogation (point to note for clarification: SOM can only tell whether the file was generated – it can’t tell if your EDI package actually sent the file, or if the email went successfully).
Secondly, invoice extras can now be transmitted by EDI in addition to “normal” a daily invoice, which deals with extras order taken by the van driver, for example, which need to be transmitted electronically.
Finally, for EDI Orders, there is a new system option so that orders received with a date in the past will be rejected.
Global Price Changes
To save time and effort for those users with many price tables per product, SOM now has a new Price menu option for updating all price tables for a range of products called "Update Table Prices By Range". This is in response to calls from several users who are having to deal with more and more frequent fluctuations in ingredient costs, especially flour.
Printing water mark on “Reprint weekly invoices”
SOM now has the option to print the words “COPY” on reprints of all Weekly Invoices. Large background text (COPY) will be inserted before printing.
The COPY feature can only be used when printing via LASER PRINTERS
VAT Changes – 4th Jan 2011
As you all know VAT changes from 17.5% to 20% for applicable products and ingredients on 4th January 2011. You can change the VAT rate in SOM at any time in advance using the VAT Rates program, which is in the system menu. Please see the Winter 2010 newsletter for full details of how to do this.
System Backup for both SOM & Cobs
It would be our recommendation you review the processes in place at your business, with specific regards to BACKING UP your DATA, a small number of clients recently had the misfortune to experience hardware failures, resulting in total loss of data, try and imagine the implications if this happened to your company.
Whilst Merit is happy to assist in commissioning a new PC / Server there are two critical points to remember:
Are YOUR DATA and PROGRAMS (SOM Database)recoverable from the backup media?
Is the backup CURRENT e.g. today’s or last night? (Not last week or last month)
We’ve produced an information sheet you can read by visiting our website
Future developments underway
Always looking to the future, we are now designing and planning new functionality aimed at Master Production Scheduling and Works order Execution. These features will be particularly important where capacity constraints mean that production must be spread over a working shift or several days to fulfil forecast as well as actual sales demand, the application maybe more suited to the larger bakeries and Foods Manufacturing Companies. The modules will work together and draw data from other parts of the system that already exist, such as Recipes and Stock Control. They could also be used independently e.g. Master Production Scheduling without Works Orders or vice versa.
Look out for more detailed information in our next News Letter.
