References

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Reers Geflügel

Trust up to the bearing key

“What goes out here is far from the commercial standard,” say managing partners Martina Martini and Tom Scheipers. From chicken and turkey parts to seasonal poultry and poultry sausage, the assortment ranges to salads and delicatessen. Specialties such as fresh guinea fowl, quail or game are also available thanks to well-developed supplier relationships as far away as Italy or New Zealand. “However, the vast majority of our suppliers are medium-sized companies from the region, just like our customers – and we know all of them personally,” Martini emphasizes. In this way, Reers can respond to the different customer requirements and guarantee each of the 200 or so food retailers, specialist butchers, weekly market traders and large-scale catering establishments specific cuts, calibrations or even types of packaging as required.

In addition to this flexibility, Reers’ customers expect reliability and punctuality above all. “What I say on the phone has to stand the test of time,” Scheipers sums up. “If Mrs. Meier needs a rabbit for Saturday, that’s often more important to a family-run business than 100 kg of turkey breast.” This is ensured by precisely coordinated goods logistics in shift operation. During the day, the sale runs, until 7 p.m. the required fresh goods are delivered, then the picking begins. After 10 p.m., deliveries are then made by the company’s own fleet of trucks. Here, too, customers demonstrate great trust: “Many businesses don’t have their receiving department manned at night and simply give us their key,” Martini reports. So the butcher finds a well-stocked warehouse when he packs for the weekly market bright and early the next morning.

Standard is not good enough

In the search for software that could support these complex workflows, it quickly became clear that a standard commercial solution would not suffice. “We are, after all, dealing with a natural product,” Scheipers explains. “If I’ve ordered 300 boxes of chicken fillets for the evening, I want to be able to deliver – even without knowing the exact weight. They have to go into inventory at noon, when they go onto the truck at the supplier, and then the goods are picked for the customers. Whether it ends up being 3,025 kg or 2,980 kg doesn’t have to interest me at this point.”

When Martini and Scheipers asked around at friendly companies, many already had agmadata’s software in use. The general recommendation was that it specialized in the food industry and was very familiar with the specifics of the meat industry. The feedback on service and accessibility could not be better either. “When we visited the company’s headquarters in Nikolausdorf, we then immediately realized how well we fit together,” says Martini. “Our customer service representative was a master butcher himself, so we didn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining our concerns and needs to him.”

Nevertheless, agmadata wanted to get a picture for itself before a concrete offer was put on the table. For two days, the consultants were at the plant, talking to the warehouse staff at night, looking at the telesales processes during the day, and documenting all the processes. “With a daily turnover of 40 tons of goods, that added up to quite a bit,” recalls agmadata Managing Director Helmut Voßmann.

Step by step everything under control

So everyone involved knew what to expect when the decision was finally made in favor of agmadata. “In terms of price/performance ratio, it was a good fit and we felt well looked after right from the start,” Martini reports. “It is particularly important for us that we can reach support around the clock, because they work here at night. That was a matter of course for agmadata – they just know what happens when something happens.”

In order not to overburden the medium-sized company with 40 employees, the software was initially only used to create delivery bills. “It was clear to us from the start that the real potential lies in real-time inventory control,” Scheipers knows. However, in order to achieve this, some preliminary work was still necessary. Thus, the article master was largely standardized. “For Goose Leg TK alone, we now have ten different part numbers differentiated by weights and calibrations.”

Suppliers also had to follow suit and print all information about the goods as a scannable EAN128 barcode on the cartons. “None of this happened overnight, but it was worth it,” concludes Scheipers. “Today, the goods are scanned when they are delivered, so everything is under control.” The agmadata software then checks that the wrong item has not been packed by mistake, records batch, best before date and weights, and takes care of the necessary documentation in accordance with EC and QS certification requirements. For clean batch tracing, this information is also included in the shipping documents. “When the veterinary office comes, there are no discussions,” Martini guarantees customers.

Personal contact is everything

Although orders by mail or fax are of course possible, the vast majority of customers rely on the telephone for this purpose. This personal contact is important for both sides – for example, during the barbecue season, the salesperson can remind customers to order additional products such as sauces. Or a vacation replacement doesn’t know exactly what to order and in what quantity: The salesperson sees the customer’s usual order items directly and can then advise or even follow up if something is missing.

At the sales station with three monitors, however, he also has an eye on the stock and the goods in stock at all times. In this way, he can tell directly what is coming and when, or jointly look for alternatives or subsequent delivery possibilities. This gives the customer the certainty that the agreement made will be honored in any case – crucial especially in seasonal business when it comes to fulfilling consumer orders.

“With the changed opening hours in the retail trade, it occasionally happens that the order for Sunday evening is forgotten in the hectic rush at the weekend. So that the customer is not left without goods on Monday, in such cases we sometimes simply write an order from ourselves for what he usually ordered on Sunday,” Scheipers smiles. “Most of the time, the customer doesn’t even notice.”

With Reers, however, such gaps are immediately noticeable. All it takes is a glance at the daily phone list, where every employee can see which customer has already ordered, still needs to be called, or doesn’t need anything today. If someone doesn’t call who normally calls, or they haven’t confirmed their pre-order yet, they will call – all it takes is a click on the green call button in the software and the phone system will set up the connection to the customer’s landline or mobile, depending on their availability.

Consistently further developed

“The fact that it works so smoothly today is the result of ten years of development,” says Martini. “We’ve looked at agmadata software from the beginning as a basic framework that we’ve continued to build on with new modules for us.” Since Reers was one of the first users to switch to the new iFood 2.0 when the software was released in 2016, fleet and route planning is also fully system-supported. “In the last three or four years, we’ve really picked up,” Scheipers reports. “Now we’re always tackling new modules and continuously expanding our solution. That takes time to do reasonably.”

Today, all orders to suppliers are already transmitted electronically – either with EDI orders or by mail or fax. Similarly, customers already receive an electronic order confirmation, EDI Invoice is also supported and invoices can be sent by e-mail in a legally binding manner. “agmadata always has its finger on the pulse and makes such developments available to us at an early stage. Often enough, our partner companies are not yet ready to use them and end up typing out our electronic documents.

Conclusion

At Reers, on the other hand, all processes have long been fully digitalized thanks to iFood. “It’s hard to imagine it any other way,” Martini says, recalling the days when delivery bills were typed. “On our telephone lists for customer calls, we checked off daily with a water-soluble pen who had already ordered. And coordination among each other was done by shouting loudly in the office: ‘Have you reached him yet?’ – ‘No, he’ll call back.'”

Today, the good system support also makes it possible for employees from other areas to help out in sales at any time. “When I have the customer on the phone, I can immediately see in the history which chicken fillets they always get,” Martini explains. “This transparency has significantly reduced our error rate.”

In parallel, the quality of customer service has increased. This is because it also makes it possible for warehouse staff to accept orders in the evening after office hours. If the customer calls at 9 p.m. and wants to reorder something, the warehouse clerk can check to see if the item is there, possibly offer alternatives, and quickly type them in for same evening delivery. “No one else is as flexible as we are,” Scheipers is pleased to say. “With us, you can literally order until the truck leaves the yard.”