Case Study
Foodtec Canada – as part of a group of jointly owned subsidiary companies is an international trading company specializing in bulk purchasing and selling of diary, milk and cheese food products. Dealing with thousands of suppliers and purchasers like Kraft Canada, Parmalat Canada, Agropur and Saputo Foods on a daily basis, Foodtec is a major player in Canada’s food supply chain.
In the fall of 2011, JAMSoft was awarded a contract to automate and streamline Foodtec’s trading process. Prior to this, Foodtec directors had investigated several possible ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions, but found them to either include more functionality than they required, or would require too much customization work to suit their needs.
Milestone #1
JAMSoft assisted in the procurement, acquisition and configuration of hardware and software and other technologies to support the solution, including the migration of much of the existing infrastructure into a cloud-based solution.
Milestone #2
Building the application – simply called “The Trading System”. A custom-built .NET Framework application that utilized MS SQL Server for data storage as well as fully utilizing the new SQL Server Filestream Technology to provide a fast and efficient Document Management module.
Milestone #3
Implementation. In under a day, floor traders were using the system effectively and there was an immediate and significant increase in accuracy and efficiency in day-to-day trading activity.
Client Comments
“The Food Trading industry is really quite unique when compared to other similar commodity trading in other industries. We really march to our own drummer with some pretty unique requirements relating to inventorying perishable items. Customizing an exiting solution to fit our needs just didn’t make sense, when at the end of the day we still end up making “square-peg” software fit a “round-hole” solution. This is why we decided to start from the ground-up, and develop a completely custom solution to fit our needs exactly. JAMSoft was willing to take the time to learn the subtleties of our business and understand our unique needs. We were impressed by their knowledge and professionalism, and decided they were the right choice as our solution provider. ” – Jonathan Tyers – President, Foodtec Canada.
JAMSoft Comments
“Exercising our due diligence, we initially looked at a number of Foodtec’s requirements with an eye to customizing existing ERP solutions we had worked with in the past. We did end up coming to the same conclusions as the client however – they wanted a perfect fit software solution, and there are always compromises when customizing an existing software program to fit your business. Budget-wise, it made more sense to them to pay a premium to get exactly what they wanted rather than spend the money and time to only come close with an off-the-shelf solution. They felt both they and more importantly, their customers deserved better than that.” – James Moyer – President – JAMSoft Software.
A Complete Success!
After several months with Foodtec and all subsidiaries running the system, both Foodtec and JAMSoft are calling the project a complete success.
“I love it! We are absolutely thrilled with not only the end product, but also the whole development process. We are also quite pleased that our decision to go the custom-built application route was validated. There were no surprises, no disappointments and most importantly, we got what we wanted, when we were promised it, all within the original budget. Would I recommend JAMSoft to other potential clients? Absolutely and without reservation! We are already looking at additional enhancements to the system now that we can see the potential a custom built application presents. ” – Jonathan Tyers – President, Foodtec Canada.