IRIS Exchequer fits the bill for Gressingham Foods

Gressingham Foods, a family business, is licensed to produce the Gressingham breed.  Founded in 1971 as Green Label Foods, the company later changed its name to Gressingham Foods in 2006 to reflect its best selling product, the Gressingham Duck.  
 
Today the range of poultry and meat the company provides has grown hugely to include other types of duck, geese and other poultry.  Gressingham Foods and Duck are now sold by many of the UK's leading retailers, food chains and independent stockists and feature on the menus of top restaurants nationwide.   

 
Gressingham Foods has picked up numerous industry awards for its quality and also the ethical way it runs its business.  The company has rigorous standards about the health, safety and welfare of the animals they raise and, not only sells whole birds to retailers and food chains, but also minimises waste by supplying various parts for specialist food manufacture, such as livers for pate.
 
Their challenge
The company has two main production facilities, one at Debach, a rural farm near Woodbridge in Suffolk that is also home to Gressingham's headquarters, and the other at Redgrave also in rural Suffolk.
 
Another part of their business, Green Label Farms LLP, is directly responsible for all the farms in the Gressingham Group and manages a completely integrated farming system, from breeding through to hatching and rearing the birds they sell.
 
Since the company began trading, the company has grown significantly with exports now accounting for 4% of their turnover and the range of territories its products now reach expanding dramatically.  Gressingham Foods' business is now split approximately 50/50 between poultry wholesalers, who supply into some of the top hotels and restaurants throughout the UK, and retailers.  
 
In 2004, as the company continued to grow, their previous software, Lakeview, no longer met their requirements.  It was crucial for them to find a provider that would offer a full management system to control and fully document all operations whilst meeting their stringent policies and best practices...that's where IRIS Exchequer came in.
 
Gressingham Foods goes quackers over IRIS Exchequer
Gressingham Foods was impressed by IRIS Exchequer's ability to deliver efficiency and strong management reporting across their organisation and chose the system based on its flexible approach and ability to evolve as their business grows. Raymond Smith, Finance Manager, Gressingham Foods, said: " In recent years we have made two significant business acquisitions which has helped increase our annual sales from 30m to 90m and Exchequer absorbed all the extra transactions with very little effort."
 
Since implementing the system, Gressingham Foods has really reaped the benefits.  IRIS Exchequer is used to run the accounts for the main company, the manufacturing unit and for their farms, as well as raise all their purchase orders, including feeds for the poultry.
 
To further support Gressingham foods, the IRIS Exchequer team also provided some bespoke to enable even faster order entry.  Another solution has also provided Gressingham with a number of import/export routines to enable orders entered on to IRIS Exchequer to be automatically sent to the manufacturing system for despatch.  IRIS Exchequer also integrates with their existing Freeway EDI system which uses the Exchequer integration tools to automatically put retailer sales orders into Exchequer and also to send electronic invoices from Exchequer to the major supermarkets.  Furthermore, IRIS Exchequer also integrates with their own manufacturing system which uses bar code scanning to control orders, picking and packing.
 
Mr Smith goes on to say: "Gressingham Foods is synonymous with quality poultry and speciality meats and it was vital for us to find a solution that would deliver exceptional levels of functionality, not to mention significant time and cost savings.  IRIS Exchequer has not only met, but exceeded our expectations.  We now have full and accurate traceability over our order processing and effectively manage our stock to optimum levels to keep our stock overheads low."
 
Mr. Smith added: "We were particularly impressed with the ease of getting at the raw data using IRIS Exchequer's range of reporting tools.  It has enabled us to create customised reports at the touch of a button, saving us substantial time and allowing us to drill down to any level it's this level of management reporting that is key to providing us with the business insight we need to support us as our company grows."