The search for an ERP solution that would better meet the needs of today and leave enough space for the possibilities of tomorrow, led animal feed manufacturer Vitelia Voeders to Adifo. The powerful combination of Adifo’s sector-specific ERP flagship MILAS and Microsoft Dynamics 365 turned out to perfectly meet Vitelia Voeders’ demand. The result: a customer ready for further growth and looking to the future with full confidence.
Today, the agricultural cooperative Vitelia, created in the South-East Netherlands in 1921, has customers throughout the country: stock breeders, plant and tree growers, but also customers in the arable and horticultural sector. Vitelia Voeders, one of the cooperative’s companies, manufactures feeds for chickens, cows and pigs in two modern factories in the province of North Limburg. On a yearly basis, this company sells more than 470.000 tons of feeds and raw materials. “We are doing our utmost to provide everyone with the best possible products at the optimal price-quality ratio,” says managing director Stefan Kuijpers.
What preceded
Vitelia Voeders wants to be available around the clock for its customers. Therefore, the company has been strongly committed to thorough automation and digitization for several years. Meanwhile, these investments have achieved positive results. This way, in 2020, Vitelia Voeders launched a new digital ordering portal with a modern look-and-feel and extra possibilities for mobile business. “However, the engine behind the solution is more important to us,” emphasizes Stefan Kuijpers. This engine, the existing ERP system, also progressively needed to be renewed.
The starting point
More and more often, Vitelia Voeders was being confronted with the limits and restrictions of its old ERP system, which felt more and more like a straightjacket. “Both our safety guarantees and our innovative capacity were threatened in the long term. We didn’t feel well anymore about them,” says Stefan Kuijpers. “Obviously, the time was more than ripe for a new ERP solution. It should not only meet our current needs, but it should also allow future developments and innovations.”
The solution
In its search for an implementation partner, Vitelia Voeders soon found Adifo. “We already knew Adifo since we had previously worked with BESTMIX”, says Stefan Kuijpers. After a comparative test with another candidate partner, Adifo turned out to be the best. “All colleagues were unanimous with regard to their choice for Adifo. Its project proposal showed that it proceeded in a much more structured way. And we appreciate such an approach.”
The solution Adifo proposed during that trial session, combines Microsoft Dynamics 365 with the sector-specific possibilities of MILAS, Adifo’s own ERP for animal and human nutrition companies. “At Adifo, we have been focusing on the animal nutrition industry since 1974,” says Ellen Betz, Adifo’s project manager. “The know-how about this sector we have been building up since then, is not only being reflected in our software, but also in the knowledge and enthusiasm of our employees.”
The proposed solution especially excels by its completeness. Apart from common ERP applications, such as financial management and extensive logistic purchase and sales flows, MILAS also covers specific ERP requirements from the animal nutrition industry, such as contract management, cost price calculation, extensive price correction management and margin setting, grain handling with quality control and route planning with contamination control. Last but not least: bidirectional integrations have also been set up for smooth data exchange with BESTMIX Feed Formulation, BESTMIX Quality Management and Imtech’s MES factory software. The complete package is not only integrated with the MES on both production sites of Vitelia Voeders, but also on a third site, where the storage and transshipment of raw materials take place. The supply of these raw materials happens both by road and by water.
The implementation
From the beginning, the management of Vitelia Voeders has been closely involved in this strategic project. Together with the external project leader, it closely followed the implementation. “We took the opportunity to evaluate all of our processes. Throughout the years, the number of deviations and exceptions to our procedures had been increasing, due to which they were not always included in the system. Where necessary, we have included and automated them now,” Stefan Kuijpers explains.
Due to the corona crisis, Vitelia Voeders had to postpone the planned launch of the new ERP system by some three months. “After all, that hasn’t been such a bad thing,” says Stefan Kuijpers. “It allowed us to test the system more extensively, to optimize some aspects and to provide the users with better training. Moreover, we were able to partly introduce and partly prepare what was only planned for the second implementation stage.”
Looking back
While waiting for that second stage, Stefan Kuijpers looks back with satisfaction on a successful implementation. “The flows are running well with the new ERP. The processes are better integrated and optimized. And what we now have in terms of links and possibilities, is a lot more extensive than what we had before.” With some help from Adifo, Vitelia Voeders can now also work itself with Microsoft Power BI in order to create reports, for instance. “In the past, we used to work a lot with Excel. However, thanks to our new ERP, the automation has become more thorough. The new package offers us more options to get the desired data from MILAS. This allows us to further optimize the processes and to make the right decisions about purchase and sales. So, this is really the springboard to the future we had hoped for.”