Agripacific Corporation thrives in a remote and digital economy

Background

In 2015, Agripacific Corporation (APC) produces high quality food products and ingredients. The company produce the finest flour, oil, and shortening by installing top-of-the-line, new generation machines, establishing the strictest quality assurance processes. The team has with a combined experience of 50 years in the food production, service, and other related expertise.

APC is under the Rebisco Group of Companies. Rebisco — Republic Biscuit Company — is a pioneer and a respected name in the biscuit and snacks industry. Its products, for which APC supplies ingredients, exports to key markets including China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Myanmar.

Outdated processes

When APC started their operations, they did not have any ERP system in place. Their process were highly manual, where they depended on Microsoft Excel in recording transactions, tracking activities, and managing their finances. Thus, business transactions were tedious to execute, not to mention resource-heavy. As they scaled their size and operations, they simply could not keep up.

Another major challenge was reporting. Data originated from disjointed sources and often needed manual intervention to capture, process, and analyze – resulting in inaccuracies and errors. They could not use their data in order to make decisions affecting operations and expansion — a hindrance to the growth they were envisioning.

Challenges encountered

Apart from manual transactions and lack of data, they were experiencing the following challenges:

• Improving cash position by making decisions regarding optimum time for payment and capturing cash discounts

• Assessing impact of asset investment

• Processing complex purchasing requirements and supply chain activities quickly and seamlessly

• Predicting inventory coverage for critical parts

• Holistic production planning across relevant production sites

APC required a system that would take their business to the next level — achieve operational efficiency and confidently expand not only their territories but also their product lines, while maintaining the high quality products and services they brought to their customers.

The solution

APC opted for SAP S/4HANA. SAP S/4HANA is a complete enterprise resource planning system covering every aspect of a manufacturing business: financials, procurement, inventory, production, sales, and more. With SAP S/4HANA, APC expects to achieve the following objectives:

• Improve quality and timeliness of decision making

• Streamline organization cost management

• Lower risk of errors

• Improve visibility and transparency of transactions and processes

• Achieve real-time reporting

• Make customer behaviour and supplier relationship visible

APC did a greenfield implementation of SAP S/4HANA to cover the following modules: Financial Accounting, Controlling, Materials Management, Sales and Distribution, Production Planning and Project System.  They adopted SAP best practices. Included are BIR requirements and integration with their Point of Sale (POS). 

According to the experience of the delaware Philippines project team, who implemented the SAP S/4HANA solution for APC, APC was an ideal candidate for digital transformation: a midsized organization willing to learn and pivot in order to grow and make their customers happy. Weighed down by the manual and traditional way of doing things, they were willing to shed status quo and adopt a new technology to achieve their goals.

Outcomes

APC successfully leveraged SAP S/4HANA to shift manual processes to digital. This transformation allowed them to do things faster, make decisions based on a single source of reliable truth, and integrate all aspects of their business in a single platform.

With the team freed up from transactional tasks, they focused on growth — expanding to other lines of businesses such as bread and farming in a span of only 2 years. Their operations were barely disrupted at the onset of the pandemic. To date, they continue to serve customers with high-quality products, contributing to keeping jobs and the economy afloat.

Business benefits

Business continuity

Operations continued seamlessly amid the pandemic when work-from-home was suddenly implemented. Faster month-end closing. From 15 days of closing books before SAP was established down to 8 days with SAP.

Operational efficiency

Manual data encoding and reporting redundancies were eliminated.

Better inventory control and monitoring

Due to SAP’s batch coding and shelf-life monitoring capabilities, APC was able to take control of inventory, achieving 99% accuracy. Acceptance of near expiry materials are avoided thanks to system controls during material receiving.

Improved Material Requirements Planning (MRP)

Compared to the old system of using Excel sheets, SAP is a much better platform to plan material requirements as it integrates all aspects of the business.

Transactional integrity

In SAP, it is not easy to add or delete erroneously encoded data, unlike in spreadsheets. SAP data is 100% traceable.

Benefits to HR

Efficiency

Redundant and tedious work such as data encoding to manually generate reports is now eliminated. Team members can focus on more strategic projects and still get reports done by simply downloading the data.

People development

Team members developed new technical skills, became more digitally enabled, and adopted an agile mindset.

Accountability

Transactions are traceable, so users are more intentional when it comes to inputting accurate data into the system.

Improved productivity

Rather than spending too much time in encoding, employees can now spend more time on analysis – a step that can lead to developing better insights for the business.

IT benefits

Business process

Business processes are improved through API integration and automation.

Data privacy

Security and control are put in place in order to restrict and manage access to specific data.

Remote connectivity

Users can now access the system remotely. Whether they are working from home, a café, or anywhere is now possible and easy to set up.

Faster business process expansion

Due to standard data structuring and system configurations, it will be easy to expand the system to cater the needs of new business areas.

Best Run Awards Nomination

Agripacific Corporation was recently nominated in the SAP Best Run Awards Asia Pacific, under the Game Changer category. It was in recognition of enterprises that drove change management throughout the corporation, from different lines of business, achieving sustainable growth and business performance.