Sin Hwa Dee Foodstuff Industries Pte Ltd
Leading the way in food distribution with a total IT solution.
Company Background
Sin Hwa Dee Foodstuff Industries Pte Ltd began its business in the food manufacturing industry by producing and selling soya sauce, oyster sauce, bean paste and plum paste in the seventies. Over the years, the company has grown by leaps and bound with increased in product line as well as a production capacity of more than 12 tonnes of sauce per day.
Sin Hwa Dee’s products are marketed under its “Chng Kee’s” label and are sold locally to retailers, supermarkets, restaurants, food caterers, fast food chains, wholesalers as well as other foodstuff manufacturers. The company also exports its products to countries such as Australia, France, Holland, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, the Philippines, Sri Lanka as well as Taiwan, and has gradually become an internationally renowned manufacturer of Chinese and Asian sauces.
Located at Senoko with admin and production facilities, Sin Hwa Dee has a total of 50 staff and is equipped with high-tech machineries to automate its production of traditional recipe sauces using the latest food manufacturing and packaging techniques.
Business Challenge
For many years, Sin Hwa Dee has relied on manual processing. In 1992, the company began using notebook computers to record orders and subsequently transmit them to head office by modem. However, with increase in business volume and product line, the managing director, Jocelyn Chng came to realize the importance of IT and a total solution.
Indeed, with a base of around 4000 customers and more than 100 orders processed a day, the company needed a computerized system to manage its inventory and finance. In line with its commitment to deliver fresh products to customers on a timely basis, Sin Hwa Dee needed the system to be able to provide order management, stock tracking and provide accurate reports to assist the company in formulating accurate sales forecast. For a company in the food industry, it is important to balance the need for stock availability and the risk of over-stocking. In addition, the company needed to analyze buying pattern of its customers as well as identify sellable products for greater insight into marketing and new product development.
Like most foodstuff distributors, Sin Hwa Dee has a fleet of van sales that actively calls on its local customers to maximize the sales of its products. To achieve its aim, Sin Hwa Dee needed a solution that would enable its van salesmen to carry out their activities with speed and efficiency.
Sin Hwa Dee's famous Hainanese chicken rice paste.
Implementation
Sin Hwa Dee’s requirements are met by the deployment of the e-Solution financial management and distribution management solutions at the back-end and also the biz-e-Motion mobile sales automation solution for management of van sales. The developer of the solution, Silk Technologies did the implementation in two phases, over a period of five months with on-site training provided.
The company uses the HP server as their enterprise server. Users in the finance, order processing and inventory departments access the system with HP workstations that are networked to the server.
Back-end Solution
The back-end systems enabled Sin Hwa Dee to have better control over its finance including its accounts receivables. Distribution management system provided order management and stock tracking. Its analysis reports have also facilitated the company’s periodic sales forecasting.
In addition, Sin Hwa Dee benefited from more efficient process flows through the use of batch order conversion, batch document printing and regular orders. The availability of customer and vendor profiling also enabled Sin Hwa Dee to better analyze buying and purchasing patterns of customers and vendors with different characteristics. The built-in report writer in the system has also enabled Sin Hwa Dee to have monthly and weekly sales reports available on a timely basis. These reports would take its admin staff weeks to produce in the past.
The back-end system has therefore improved the efficiency of the operation staff and at the same time provided management with better understanding of the business.
Van Sales Automation
The second phase of the project addressed the needs of Sin Hwa Dee’s van sales operations. With biz-e-Motion MobileSales, Sin Hwa Dee’s van salesmen are equipped with the HP iPaq Business PDAs that enable them to check customer and product information anytime and anywhere. Van salesmen synchronize their PDAs with the server in the morning when they load up the vans. During the day, sales transactions are entered and stored in the PDAs. biz-e-Motion MobileSales program on the PDAs updates the stocks available in the van as sales transactions are being entered. The salesmen therefore have a clear picture of what is available in their vans on their PDAs. In addition, they are able to check stock availability on company level through wireless synchronization should there be a need to make a sales commitment.
When the salesmen return to the office at the end of the day, the stored transactions are uploaded and merged into the back-end system, with the relevant modules updated. This eliminates the need to key-in van sales transactions which will otherwise require additional manpower had they relied on manual recording.
biz-e-Motion MobileSales caters to different types of transactions that may take place in the van sales operation. These include cash sales, cash collection, sales orders, etc. Mobile receipt printers installed in the vans enable the salesmen to print presentable source documents for each transaction.
Other features that are useful to Sin Hwa Dee include the ability to check customer credit status on the PDAs as well as the use of regular orders to speed up order entry.
Sin Hwa Dee's sales reps are equipped with PDA's.
Biz-e-Motion has proven to be a great companion for van sales operations easing the salesmen of paper work and therefore enabling them to focus on maximizing sales with more visits and better service.
Financing
Being a local enterprise in Singapore, Sin Hwa Dee 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 Sin Hwa Dee and other qualifying companies defray the cost of their IT investments.
For more information on Sin Hwa Dee Foodstuff Industries Pte Ltd, please visit
Sin Hwa Dee Foodstuff Industries Pte Ltd
8 Senoko South Road #01-01 CHNG Kee's Foodlink
Singapore 758095
Tel: 65-6775 2262
Fax: 65-6775 6656
Overview
Company:
Sin Hwa Dee Foodstuff Industries Pte Ltd
Industry:
Food Processing Industry
Business Activities:
Manufacture and distribute traditional pre-mixed sauces and pastes.
Business Challenge:
1. Track orders and inventory for more accurate forecasting.
2. Management finance.
3. Better information analysis
4. Strengthen van sales
Solutions Implemented:
Financial Management
Distribution Management
MobileSales Automation
Program Used:
e-Solution Accounting
e-Solution Distribution
biz-e-Motion MobileSales
Hardware:
HP server
HP workstation
HP PDA