How in2food Transformed Financial Reporting with Zap Data Hub.

Customer Profile

in2food is a specialized food manufacturing business formed in December 2010. With ten manufacturing facilities across South Africa, the company produces bespoke food products primarily for a major national retailer. in2food also services the local industrial and food service market while also servicing some export customers.

The business challenge

The company faced several critical challenges that hindered operational efficiency:

• Disparate ERP Systems – Each acquired business operated on different platforms, making consolidated reporting extremely difficult.
• ERP Standardization Need – in2food recognized that to achieve operational consistency and efficiency, they needed to standardize on a single ERP platform across all facilities.
• Manual Reporting Processes – Financial and operational reporting required extensive manual work in Excel spreadsheets, leading to delays and potential errors.

The solution

in2food’s transformation began with a strategic decision to implement SYSPRO across all operations. “We spent about four to six months planning the SYSPRO implementation. After completing the planning, we started with the implementation in February 2019 and finished in March 2020, just before COVID-19 hit,” says Goble. “We completed eleven manufacturing site implementations in 12 months.”

The outcome

The implementation of Zap Data Hub delivered immediate and significant benefits:

• Transformed Decision-Making – “It changed the conversation,” notes Goble. “If you were to ask ten operations managers for their debtors aging or inventory values, it would take a week to get the answer, and then it was already a week old. Now that information is live, enabling more informed decisions.”
• Enhanced Operational Agility – When faced with supply chain challenges, like worldwide shortages, in2food can now quickly analyze inventory across all facilities, assess consumption rates based on bills of materials, identify potential shortfalls, and adjust production accordingly.
• Improved Working Capital Management – The solution provides real-time visibility into debtors aging, creditors aging, inventory aging, and cash flow, allowing for more effective financial management.