Field Catering and Supplies Pte Ltd

Streamlining operations and sustaining future growth with the use of IT.

Company Background

Field Catering and Supplies Pte Ltd (FCS in short) was founded in 1986 and has grown to become a market leader in the production and distribution of beverages and snacks within a very short time span. The company is also a leader in community service with active participation in community projects and regular sponsorship of drinks on national events.

FCS attained its leading position in the market by developing a strong product mix to provide its customers with the convenience of purchasing their supplies under one roof. Besides developing branding and image for its product lines, FCS also distributes products made by other manufacturers to add to its product mix. To date, it has developed more than 14 successful brand names under its belt. These include household names like Polar and Aqua mineral water, Snapple fruit juice, Sportade sports drink, Orangina sparkling drink, Mr. Brown coffee, Shark energy drink and Mister Potato chips, etc. To stay ahead, FCS is actively researching and developing new products to meet the demands of an increasingly sophisticated market.

FCS has established a wide distribution network including supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol stations, and retailers. Mineral water in 5-gallon containers is also supplied to corporate and households with rental and service maintenance contracts for water dispensers. The company is committed to complete deliveries anywhere in Singapore within 24 hours after orders are placed. To support this commitment, it has a fleet of delivery trucks and the logistics support in place.

Management Foresight

With the aim to increase its market share through product and market development, as well as service quality, FCS recognized the need to implement a new system in order to run its operations smoothly and at the same time cater for its planned expansion.

Popular Mineral Water Products Distributed by Field Catering and Supplies

Business Challenge

FCS’s previous system was acquired 10 years ago on a piece-meal fashion. It was made up of accounts receivable, accounts payable and inventory sub-systems that are not integrated. As the system was not integrated, staffs need to enter twice, first in the accounts receivable system for billing and again in the inventory system to update stock status.

This resulted in a huge amount of manual work involved in updating from one system to another and has led to frequent human errors. FCS realized that this is a bottleneck and has resulted in loss of productivity, as they had to spend a lot of time rectifying data-entry errors.

FCS delivers goods to customers from different warehouses, as the warehouse at its Senoko headquarters is insufficient to house all its products. However, it practices central billing for greater control. It thus requires a system that is capable of managing multiple warehouses and allows users to select the warehouse from which goods are drawn for each sales order.

One of FCS’s business activities involves renting out water dispensers and supplying mineral water in 5-gallon containers to corporate customers. It therefore needs to keep track of dispensers that are located at customers’ premises and the best way to do so is by their unique serial numbers. As the old system does not cater to this, FCS had to rely on manual tracking. Manual updating is required whenever new dispensers are rented out and rented dispensers returned.

FCS’s problem was worsened by the system’s inability to product reports for the management. The company had to make use of spreadsheets to compile reports which as a result are usually available two weeks to a month after the reporting period.

Aqua Mineral Water, Snapple Juice and Sportade Sports Drink are popular products distributed by FCS.

Implementation

FCS’s problems are solved with the implementation of the e-Solution Accounting and Distribution management system (e-Soluton Business Suite). The developer, Silk Technologies carried out implementation including fact-finding, hardware acquisition, site preparation, installation, training and acceptance testing.

Silk Technologies also set up the network, consisting of a HP server as the enterprise server and several HP workstations for order processing and inventory management tasks.

Integrated Solution

The immediate benefits FCS saw upon implementation of the e-Solution Business Suite is the elimination of manual work as the system is fully integrated with sales, purchase and inventory modules linked to the financial modules including payables, receivables, general ledger and cash management. Staffs no longer need to rectify data entry errors as the system updates the relevant modules when transactions are entered. They can now focus on more productive activities.

The distribution module tracks stock at multiple warehouses and deducts stocks according to the selected warehouse. In addition, FCS made use of the system’s audit and approval feature to set up controls in its process flows.

The inventory module in the e-Solution Business Suite supports tracking of serial number for inventory items. FCS made use of this feature to track water dispensers that are rented to customers. The system keeps track of the serial numbers all dispenser at customers’ premises. When entering dispenser movements, FCS is able to select the serial number of the equipment from a list of serial numbers. With this feature, FCS has better control of the movement of its water dispensers. Dispenser maintenance staff know exactly which dispenser is at which location with a few mouse clicks, enabling them to provide better monitor routine maintenance of the dispensers.

The management of FCS now has access to timely reports and information, allowing identification of business trends and decision-making on a timely basis. This proved to be beneficial compared to the past when it had to make decisions based on out-dated information.

Financing

FCS was able to claim part of the IT investment cost from the government under the Local Enterprise Assistance Scheme (LETAS) upon completing the project. This scheme is designed to help FCS and other qualifying companies defray the cost of their IT investments. Qualifying companies can claim part of the stipulated costs under the scheme

For more information on Field Catering and Supplies Pte Ltd, please visit www.field.com.sg

Field Catering & Supplies Pte Ltd
28 Senoko South Road

Singapore 758090
Tel : +65 67590177

Fax : +65 67590177