Computer Services for Food and Beverage Industry

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SOA Fundamentals for Success: Defining Meaningful, Effective Business-Oriented Services
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can help businesses respond more quickly and cost-effectively to changing market-conditions and challenges. In order to implement SOA, we must identify the various types of services. Enterprise Architecture models are an important source of service information. Once identified, services need to be managed by means of service governance and metadata management.

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Mergers & Acquisitions: Impacts on Supply Chain Management
Although the pace of M&A activity has slowed during the current economic downturn, companies with sufficient cash reserves or secure financing will still take advantage of opportunistic acquisitions at bargain prices. This White Paper focuses on the three key elements that must be carefully designed, planned and executed in order to maximize the benefits of the M&A activity across the Supply Chain.

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Are You Ready for ERP? Gaining Full Value from ERP Implementations in the Public Sector
Many ERP implementations fail to meet their original goals, often for preventable reasons. Although a successful implementation can be challenging in the private sector, it can be even more daunting in the public sector. This paper discusses why public sector ERP projects are often more difficult, and presents ideas to help maximize the value of your ERP system.

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Optimizing the Value Chain: Collaborative Customer Knowledge in Global Insurance
Customer information, the foundation of customer relationship management (CRM), must be treated as a corporate asset that allows organizations to compete in a complex and rapidly evolving world.

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The Ongoing Debate
For many businesses the question is not whether to employ a distributed delivery strategy for IT services. The question is how to optimize the distributed delivery strategy to meet critical business objectives. Today, there are a myriad viable distributed delivery options.

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The What’s and How’s of ETL Architecture
This paper is basically a high level description of a highly technical subject - Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) Architecture. It is written for IT management and professionals to address and explain an area which often has been overlooked.

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Managing Third Party Risk
Some sources of risk that may not be top-of-mind include your service providers, web hosting services, contractors, outsourcers, supply-chain nodes, consulting services, and travel services—any number of outside entities having custody of or access to your sensitive information. If your extended enterprise includes these third parties, you need a way to manage this risk.

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Effective Application Outsourcing: The Importance of Provider / Client Relationships
Success with the outsourcing of information technology to key service providers continues to elude some organizations. By examining commonalities found through multiple successful outsourcing engagements, conclusions about the definition of how the engagement is managed (governance) can be drawn and applied to future engagements.

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IT Asset Rationalization & Shared Services Management
Given the current global economic climate, companies are trying to run off the extra fat from everywhere. This includes IT budgets being squeezed and IT roles being switched to keep-the-lights running roles (operations instead of innovation). In this kind of ecosystem, it is no wonder that more and more IT initiatives are focused on bottom-line, and less focused on innovative top-line growth.

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Organizational Alignment: Empowering The Business
The term Organizational Alignment brings to mind many different interpretations when spoken of in the context of an Information Technology (IT) organization. When applied to an organization as a whole, it addresses consistency of purpose and activity throughout the organization as a means to achieve organizational objectives. A similar context is true with respect to an IT organization except that an IT organization typically supports multiple parts of the organization, each of which each have their own strategies woven into a cohesive organizational strategy. When Organizational Alignment principles are applied within IT disciplines, resources create and deliver sustainable business value enabling business units to achieve their objectives.

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Business Impact Analysis: Foundation For Operational Risk Management
This white paper explains the relationship of BIA to each of the elements of operational risk management (ORM). It describes the components and process of BIA, and demonstrates how BIA can be leveraged to drive ORM programs and expenditures. The intended audience includes organizational senior managers, operational risk managers, and functional managers.

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Reducing the Excess: Using Vendor-Managed Inventory to Improve Productivity Without Sacrificing Customer Service
In this white paper, we discuss several aspects of vendor-managed inventory, including the business drivers behind its increasing popularity, risks associated with VMI, and implementation considerations. In addition, we provide a case study of a VMI system recently implemented at a major auto parts distribution company for use with its customers (auto dealers). After reading this white paper, you will have a greater understanding of the “what,” “why,” and “how” behind VMI, and will be able to determine if VMI is right for your organization.

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SAP Supply Chain Execution Solutions: IM, WM AND EWM - Which Solution is Right for You?
There are currently three options available for the SAP user who wants to optimize warehouse processes, including inventory management (IM), warehouse management (WM) and the latest development, extended warehouse management (EWM). This white paper describes those three options to help you determine which option best meets your organization needs.

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Business Intelligence Best Practices: Transforming Data into Information
The introduction of information technology systems decades ago helped organizations worldwide benefit from more efficient operations and greater productivity. Over the years, companies have acquired volumes of data in these applications, but much of this data is trapped in multiple, disparate systems which cannot easily communicate. As a result, firms must expend considerable effort to tap into the full potential of these data assets to strategically maneuver the business in a rapidly changing and competitive marketplace. The latest evolution in IT is “business intelligence,” which promises to help businesses better tap into and leverage their data assets. But what, exactly, is BI? How can it help? How is it implemented? And what can it do for your company? Essentially a primer on BI, this paper describes BI, how it can help you, and best practices to consider when launching or refining a business intelligence initiative.

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Achieving Best Practice Performance In Automotive Parts Distribution
Globalization and structural issues have caused the automotive market to become more competitive than ever, with pressure to deliver increasing levels of service at lower costs. The companies that establish themselves as dominant players in this market will have a streamlined supply chain that can deliver extraordinary customer service levels. Additionally, the flexibility to handle a variety of value added processes as easily as standard processes will be a requirement for success.

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Voice Beyond Selection Extending the ROI Benefits of Voice Technology
This white paper explores the reach of voice technology beyond its birthplace in selection and into all areas of the warehouse. From receiving to put-away, to replenishment and line loading, voice technology can provide the ability to streamline processes, improve operational performance, and rapidly deliver the most compelling ROI.

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The 7 Stages of Highly Effective Data Governance: Advanced Methodologies for Implementation
Data governance is gaining attention from companies involved in business intelligence and service-oriented architecture projects. There are many different levels of data governance maturity among firms, so this paper may be helpful for companies who want to learn more about data governance, who want to assess where they are in the data governance maturity model, and who want to identify what they must do to attain the next level of maturity and realize data governance benefits.

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Success Starts with The Vision
The companies with 20/20 vision at the start of the change journey are those that will travel well and arrive at the destination of successful, profitable benefit from the change. Addressing the “What, Why, When and Who” in strategic visioning, at the start of any organizational change initiative, is the required first step to acquire clear vision before the change journey. Well-executed strategic visioning mitigates the risks of initiating changes that sacrifice past experience, significant sunk costs, employee morale, and the company’s internal sense of identity.

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Best-of-breed Warehouse Management Systems vs. ERP Applications: Is the Gap Narrowing?
This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of best-of-breed and ERP providers and potential future trends in the WMS space. This paper provides the specific functionality, technology, and risk criteria you should consider to help you select the best WMS solution for your organization.

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The Five Key Ways Transportation Management Systems Can Rapidly Reduce Costs by up to 30 Percent
Maintaining competitive advantage in today's demanding business environment requires continual process improvement and cost reduction. Many companies focus on transportation in an effort to control supply chain costs and help ensure timely shipments. Recently, however, effective transportation management has become more complex due to several industry trends.

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The Devil Is In The Details: A Change Management White Paper
This white paper provides an overview of a practical and executable change management program with successful techniques that removes the 'devil' from change management and change resistance.

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Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in Supply Chain: Roadmap for the Future
RFID technology is one of the hottest topics for retailers, manufacturers, and other industries where added visibility and control over items in the supply chain can provide competitive advantage. In our white paper, we introduce the concept, explain how it works, and offer some ideas for how to put it to work in your organization.

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Selecting a Warehouse Management System: Strategies and Tactics
Learn how to leverage supply chain software to reduce costs, improve profitability and drive bottom-line results across your supply chain processes.

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Maximizing ROI and Getting More from Your JDA MMS
Join CIBER and our client (a major retailer), for our 60-minute webinar focusing on specific merchandise management challenges and best practices for meeting those challenges in order to achieve the greatest return from your investment in MMS.

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15 Oct 2010
CIBER Wins Contract with Eurofresh Farms to Implement Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
Read the press release | Take the PDF (25KB)

02 Jun 2010
CIBER Successfully Completes Lawson Quickstep Enterprise Software Implementation for J.R. Watkins Naturals
Read the press release | Take the PDF (25KB)

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CIBER has been awarded a contract to implement Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne system at Eurofresh Farms, a leading producer and marketer of greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers.

Read the press release | Take the PDF (22KB )

Apio, Inc.
Apio Chooses CIBER's Grower Management Solution and Selects CIBER for Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Implementation
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Bolthouse Farms
CIBER Selected for Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Implementation and CIBER's Grower Management Solution
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“By partnering with Oracle and CIBER, Eurofresh will implement a sophisticated software platform that will support all aspects of our growing business and provide management with the tools to better serve our customers, improve our business processes and ultimately reduce costs.”

Frank van Straalen — COO/CFO, Eurofresh Farms

“The suppliers we serve need to know their products are on the shelves as quickly as possible. We now have the infrastructure necessary to keep pace with high-volume replenishments driven by our continued growth. Bottom line, we are losing our ‘fire drill’ mentality and seeing more sound and calm production.”

Patrick Quinn — Vice President of Administration, Major Brands

“Working with CIBER was great. They took time to understand our business process from start to finish. They utilize a very effective methodology that got us through the implementation process very efficiently. And they were very disciplined about managing the scope of the project to make sure that we hit our deadlines. We chose to work with CIBER because they were experts in the field, and they could help us stay on a timeline and give us the end product we needed. We use technology in everything that we do and we’re excited to now have the technology information platform to be able to grow and build our business for the future.”

Kathleen Morgan — Controller, Apio, Inc.

“CIBER provided us with the technical expertise, and methodology to complete a full ERP implementation in an eight-month timeframe. We are very pleased to be operating on Lawson QuickStep as it has eliminated our unsupported legacy systems, and created the environment to support a much leaner manufacturing process. We will have more complete visibility of products from planning to procurement, and a solid platform to support future growth opportunities.”

Steve Nett — Chief Financial Officer, J.R. Watkins Naturals

“We were looking for a system that could create one integrated version of the truth for all of us. We required a new system that could be quickly implemented, very flexible, and able to scale to meet the demands of our growing business. We also needed to work with an implementation partner and a system that were no strangers to this highly specialized industry of ours. We felt that, of all the choices, the QuickWear system made, by far, the most sense for our business.”

Julie Wood — President, KNG

“CIBER has done an excellent job working with us on our Help Desk services. Overall, the process has been an easy one working with CIBER and we are very pleased with their performance. The Help Desk is the initial point of contact and acts as the central gateway for JFE’s users. CIBER’s Help Desk provides and delivers services year round, 24/7/365”

Steve McIntosh — Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Jackson Family Enterprises

“We chose CIBER as our implementation and integration partner based on their previous project experience with us and their history of significant implementations with other wine and spirits distributors. We’re thrilled with the success of the implementation in our Brooklyn facility and with the operational improvements we’ve seen with the HighJump system.”

Tony Magliocco — Chief Operating Officer, Empire Merchants

“Because of their experience in our industry, CIBER already had a deep understanding of our business, but they were also quick to learn the uniqueness of our situation. During the software selection process, CIBER’s demonstrated knowledge of the wine and spirits industry and supply chain software market assured us that CIBER was the right partner to lead the implementation as well.”

Anthony Magliocco — Chief Operating Officer, Empire Merchants

“CIBER brought the ability to assess our business requirements from a ‘big picture’ perspective. With their support, we were able to more clearly define how our requirements affected our system needs, and then design and implement the system accordingly. That was a major factor in the success of this project. From their strategic visioning services, to the development of a cost analysis program, to their ability to support us in all facets of the upgrade process, CIBER helped ensure that the project was successful, and that GOYA is well positioned for future initiatives.”

David Kinkela — Vice President of Information Technology, GOYA

Food and beverage companies now offer more products to meet the changing demands of today’s consumer. As their business becomes more complex, food and beverage companies need business solutions that are flexible enough to keep up with the rapid pace of change.

Product lines must be constantly adjusted to meet consumer demand. Business models now integrate roles from all points in the value chain. Integration, collaboration and access to timely, accurate information—from the field to the store—are all important issues for today’s food and beverage companies.

CIBER and the Food and Beverage Value Chain

Enter CIBER. Leveraging our extensive food and beverage industry experience, CIBER was one of the first firms to develop a fully ERP-integrated solution to help manage grower relationships and one of the first to apply principles of lean manufacturing to companies in the food and beverage industry.

We’ve helped companies all along the food and beverage value chain drive profitability, enhance productivity and respond more dynamically to their changing business environment.

Our clients span the entire value chain:

Suppliers
Growers and Ranchers
Packers and Processors
Brokers and Distributors
Retailers and Food Service

CIBER’s business and software expertise is focused on the needs of companies in the food and beverage value chain. We work with the top tier software vendors to develop, implement, upgrade and support solutions that help food and beverage companies improve business processes and manage their operations more effectively, driving growth and innovation to meet the changing needs of today’s consumers.

Optimize the Value of Your Business Processes

CIBER helps clients in the food and beverage industry optimize their business processes. We have a strong understanding of the unique requirements and best practices of the food and beverage industry, but also recognize that each client has unique and complex business challenges of its own. We balance an industry-focused best practices approach with a focus on teamwork and a philosophy that recognizes that no one knows your business better than you do.

Our clients include:

Suppliers: Suppliers to the food and beverage industry—including manufacturers of fertilizer, seed, farm machinery, packaging supplies and equipment, and more—need flexible enterprise financials, manufacturing and distribution applications that enable them to grow with their business and handle changes to their business model while optimizing their systems investment.

CIBER works with companies like these to implement applications, identify process improvements and adopt industry best practices that allow these companies to meet their strategic goals. We can help them implement lean manufacturing principles and a variety of other business improvements to enable more flexible manufacturing processes, improved control over inventory, shorter financial close times, and better customer service.

Growers and Ranchers: With CIBER, companies who produce the agricultural commodities that feed the world—produce, grain, livestock, dairy and poultry farmers, vertically integrated growers, packers and processors, and farmer’s cooperatives—can understand their costs, reduce product loss, improve forecast crop yields, and make faster, more informed decisions.

We offer application and industry-specific business expertise in the areas of financials, distribution, equipment maintenance, supply chain optimization, and grower management. We can help growers and ranchers manage contracts more efficiently, streamline equipment maintenance, improve financial and inventory controls, and even ensure the accuracy of supply chain execution with solutions like RFID to ensure more accurate shipments to retailers and other customers.

Packers and Processors: Produce packers and processors, beverage producers, canners, meat packing companies, dairy processors, farmer’s cooperatives, and other companies that prepare agricultural products for human consumption operate in an extremely fast-paced environment. Accurate information throughout the entire production and demand flow is the key to ensuring the freshness and safety of products destined for the dinner table.

Whether these companies sell direct to consumers, or through retail or food service establishments, customer perceptions are key. CIBER develops and implements internet-based applications for maximum speed and efficiency, ensuring product arrives fresh, customer orders are filled accurately, and management has the data it needs to react quickly to change. We also can help companies enhance monitoring and control of branding and licensing agreements, and a variety of other issues faced by packers and processors, such as charge-backs, rebates and royalty tracking

Brokers and Distributors: Brokers and distributors are a critical link in the food and beverage value chain, whether their business involves sourcing and selling products directly to retailers, without ever taking possession, or they are a traditional warehouse-based distribution operation. CIBER helps improve sales tracking, inventory tracking and accounting processes for more effective operations and lower costs of doing business.

In order to distribute perishable goods, efficient supply chain systems and processes are critical to customer satisfaction as well as profits. CIBER offers industry leading supply chain expertise and a deep understanding of the technology and other requirements that affect this industry. We can help implement software, data collection devices and processes that can speed items through the supply chain, while increasing the accuracy of transactions. We can also assist with retailer compliance to meet even the strictest requirements.

Our Food & Beverage Clients

Here are just a few of our Food & Beverage clients:

Apio, Inc.
Bolthouse Farms
Dynamic Foods
Major Brands Premium Beverage Distributors

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