Atlanta — October 17, 2006 — Guida's Milk and Ice Cream, a premier dairy based in New England, said this week it has achieved business improvements with Ross Systems' supply chain management (SCM) solution. Optimizing Guida's forecasting capabilities and enabling the dairy company to meet one of its largest customer's scan-based trading (SBT) mandate, Ross SCM has improved operational efficiencies and driven cost savings and competitive advantage.
Guida's selected Ross SCM to address two critical business issues. First, the company needed a forecasting application that would handle all of the inherent variability in the business, capable of replenishing orders based on true demand versus previous order quantities Without a more efficient method, Guida's would continue to face overstock issues, as well as frequent stockouts, resulting in costly special deliveries in order to keep customer commitments.
Secondly, Guida's turned to Ross SCM to meet the SBT mandate set by one of its largest customers, a major grocery chain. Since enabling SBT — the process of using point-of-sale scan data to manage payment, promotion and replenishment of products — was new to Guida's and the company faced a tight deadline, it was a daunting challenge.
"Guida's future with this very large customer hinged on the success of Ross SCM and our new SBT capabilities — failure was not an option," said Joel Bartolome, IT manager for Guida's. "Ross SCM fit our needs so well right out of the box that there was no need for customization. Because of this, and Ross' commitment to meeting our customer-mandated go-live date, the implementation went very well and the Ross SCM is a huge success."
Guida's implemented Ross SCM within 45 days during its busiest season to meet the SBT mandate, while its competitor scrambled and failed to meet the deadline. In addition, with Ross SCM, shipped orders reflect true customer demand, saving Guida's more than $4,000 a month by eliminating the need for special deliveries based on inaccurate forecasting.
"CDC Software is focused on helping companies like Guida's become customer-driven market leaders, demonstrating a superior ability to understand, attract and keep valuable customers," said Beth Berndt, director of Industry Solutions at Ross, focused on the food and beverage sector. "With Ross SCM, Guida's is able to deliver a responsive, differentiated and superior customer experience while running their business more productively, efficiently and profitably."
