[ IN PRACTICE ] CASEBOOK
Satisfying a Craving for Productivity THE CUSTOMER Morton Food Service is an independent distributor that supplies
To boost productivity and streamline operations, Morton Food Service, an independent distributor of food and beverage products based in Windsor, Ontario, began working with VAI, an independent mid-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) software developer.
food and beverage products to independent restaurant owners and food service operators across southwestern Ontario and the Niagara region. The company o¨ers more than 6,500 local and national products as well as many international products. THE PROVIDER VAI is an independent mid-market ERP software developer o¨ering solutions that automate critical business functions for the distribution, manufacturing, retail, and service sectors, including specific ERP solutions for hard goods, food, and pharmaceutical companies.
For example, picking operations had been largely manual and paper-based. The company’s sales reps lacked access to updated and live inventory, and special orders were treated with a combination of manual methods, such as stickers and spreadsheets. Morton also handled routing manually. “We put a lot of manual effort into almost all aspects of the business,” Lenover says. Not only was this less than ef cient, but it largely disconnected different functions from each other. Implementing a new ERP solution would address this, while also providing an opportunity to offer Morton’s customers features such as mobile capabilities. “We wanted to improve our operations and we knew that we couldn’t do it with the solution that we had at the time,” Lenover says. To help identify the best ERP solution, Morton brought in Patrick Rivait, an external project consultant. Working together, the Morton team and Rivait mapped all the company’s business processes across multiple areas, including warehouse management, purchasing, sales, and nance.
Among other actions, Morton implemented VAI’s S2K Enterprise for Food software, as well as its advanced software applications such as Mobile Order Entry, Suggested Purchasing, Warehouse Management, and Analytics. Together, these solutions are helping Morton Food Service improve productivity and visibility and grow sales. AN AGING ERP Morton Food Service offers more than 7,000 products from numerous brands to 1,000-plus customers and specializes in providing locally sourced food to restaurants across southwestern
by Karen Kroll
Ontario and the Niagara region. In 2019, the company celebrated its centennial anniversary.
Before it connected with VAI, Morton had been making do with an aging ERP solution that lacked support. It also lacked many of the capabilities Morton wanted to implement for its own operations and to offer its clients. “We realized that there were a lot of opportunities to improve our operations and our processes,” says Patrick Lenover, Morton’s director of project management.
July 2023 • Inbound Logistics 187
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