Greenhalgh's Craft Bakery

Greenhalgh's Craft Bakery (http://www.greenhalghs.com) is a family-owned business that was formed in 1957. Employing around 1,000 people, the company turns out on a daily basis over 600 different products which are sold through its own chain of retailers, and by distributors and supermarkets across the UK. In fact, it is almost certain that you have eaten their products but may not have been aware of their origin.

Background

The management team of Greenhalgh's and the users liked their legacy systems. Despite being twelve years old, the existing applications worked well, but they were beginning to restrict growth in the business and therefore needed to be changed. Naturally, the users wanted to retain the best features, but the new systems had to be adaptable for the company's current and future business requirements.

Time was of the essence, so the management team's view was that a packaged solution would be the most appropriate.

Choosing the Solution

A small task force was established, reporting to the main Board. This team evaluated a number of well-known packages, however, it soon became clear that most packages did not meet the requirements of the food industry in general, and Greenhalgh's requirements in particular.

The packages would require program tailoring, and this was going to prove expensive. The management team, quite correctly, was not prepared to change existing business processes to accommodate prescriptive software packages.

In addition, the management team wanted to integrate with existing technologies such as computers on trucks, EDI links, and links to weighing machines and touch tills. All of this would need to be custom-built and would of course be costly and time consuming.

A fixed-cost solution, delivered to a fixed time frame, and exactly matching their specialist requirements, an Appligenics-built system stood out from the crowd. As well as meeting their requirements, the system would be flexible to accommodate future changes in the business, and would not need a team of programmers to maintain it. Greenhalgh's elected to use Appligenics' business analysts to work in conjunction with their business users, and licensed the Designer and Generator products for future system maintenance.

Initial Workshops

Following the Appligenics model, a series of workshops were used to determine the requirements. This information was used to create the Appligenics Time & Cost Model, which precisely defined the parameters for the project.

A fixed price was agreed which eliminated any perceived risk regarding cost over-runs, and the design and delivery were to be performed by Business Analysts from Appligenics' Services Team, working in close liaison with the Greenhalgh's team. The cost was less than that of an off-the-shelf packaged solution, and Appligenics offered an exact fit to Greenhalgh's requirements.

The Design Process

The Business Analysts started with a design framework of core Financial and Production modules that provided a rich functional base, to which Greenhalgh's unique requirements were added. The business had needs that were specific and unique, and for these wholly new modules were designed.

The management team and the users were intimately involved in describing their requirements, and to the existing needs they added new and creative ideas to prepare the business for the future. In particular, this applied to key Business Rules where new ideas were positively encouraged.

The final solution was a 100% exact fit for the business, reflecting best business practice, and ready to accommodate change as the management team aspired to new and better processes.

Integration

The new system is seamlessly integrated into EDI systems, with data transfer to and from tills in the retail outlets, truck computers, and the transfer of recipes to pre-production weighing machines.

The system is directly supported by Appligenics' Support Desk, which has direct access to both design and code. This enables rapid support for a bespoke application unparalleled by any other in the industry.

Flexibility

Greenhalgh's is readily able to incorporate business change because its application systems can adapt as quickly as the business. What would be major projects for a traditional custom-built system, or for packaged software, are achieved in just hours with Appligenics. Changes can be made to the design, the impact assessed, and then the appropriate part of the system is simply re-generated automatically.

Summary

By using Appligenics, Greenhalgh's attained the best of all worlds for the business :

• the tight fit of a bespoke application, but achieved at significantly lower cost
• the robustness of a packaged application, without the artificial constraints
• a highly flexible solution, able to adapt with the business at incredible speed

In a competitive sector, with tight margins, Appligenics has helped Greenhalgh's to be extremely competitive.