Group Cereal Services

New Kingfisher software saved farming co-operative Group Cereal Services over £200,000 in haulage costs in its first year.

Andover based Group Cereals markets grain on behalf of its 800 members direct to the grain industry. It annually markets and delivers 600,000 tonnes of grain on behalf of the co-operative, a logistics operation requiring it to manage a fleet of 17 owner/driver lorries.

Kingfisher was approached when packaged IBM i-Series software could not meet specific requirements for upgrading the company's 15 year-old system. The aim was to improve flexibility and speed of response to members' requests and to streamline the haulage process.

The new system had to improve and speed up stock management and traceability, provide better logistics control and accurately track market demands and trends.

At the end of the first full year of trading with the tailor-made system, Group Cereals has acclaimed it an overwhelming success demonstrated by a massive reduction in haulage costs due to improved routing information. The co-operative saved more than £200,000 on haulage costs in a year that saw farming industry costs increase by around 6%.

Group Cereals managing director had the following comment: "The new system allows us to have a far more flexible approach to our grain trading business from start to finish, enabling us to handle additional volumes without increasing our overheads. Cash flow calculations and stock movement traceability that took half a day now take a few seconds. There can be no doubt that by taking the decision to have a bespoke solution developed, Group Cereals has got exactly what it wanted, without having to compromise any of its requirements. Our staff can now react very quickly to members day-to-day requests, providing the information to them in precisely the format it is needed."