“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.”
– Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee
Company Profile
- Name: Baronet Coffee
- Location: Windsor, Connecticut
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Products: Green Coffee Roaster Packaging, Grinding, Flavor, & Packages
- Website: https://baronetcoffee.com/
- System: SAP Business One ERP; CoffeeOne
About the Company
Baronet Coffee is a fourth generation family business based in Connecticut. The founder’s simple business philosophy from 1930 is still the guiding force of the company today. Provide the highest quality coffee, exceed the customer’s service expectations and you will have a customer for life.
Baronet Coffee imports green coffee and then roasts, grinds, flavors and packages it for the away-from-home and retail markets. Baronet uses both a house brand label and has many private label products for their customers. Baronet values their family style operating culture. “With our family business, it’s not just the family members but all the employees who are our family. Our family culture helps to keep that small company feel even as we grow larger”
– Bruce Goldsmith, Owner (3rd Generation), Baronet Coffee
Learn More About CoffeeOne: softengine.com/coffee
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“It’s all about relationships and trust the people that you’re working with. The bigger the project, the more important those relationships are. You’re putting your business in the hands of a company that you have to trust. And so, you know, all those steps between Hillel coming out with Rona and Jesper, for us, it gave us a comfort level to move forward with Softengine. You don’t stay in business 91 years by making bad decisions, and we did get that feeling from the Softengine team that you have the same type of culture. You were in it for the long haul, not the short make a quick buck and move on to the next person.”
Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee.
“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.”
Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee.
Being a multigenerational company, Baronet Coffee inherited many systems the previous generations had installed during their tenure. When the current system was installed over 30 years ago, Baronet was a much smaller company with different needs and products. Many processes were manual and as Baronet grew they adapted to the information they had available but knew the time was approaching to invest in a new system that would help them by providing accurate real time data. As a level 3 Safe Quality Food (SQF) certified organization, Baronet is required to maintain stringent quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) records. Maintaining this certification is essential to their commitment to the culture of food safety and operational excellence in food safety management. Accurate and timely information was necessary for Baronet to continue to grow and expand.
Baronet was looking for information that would better help them service their customers, refine their billing and shipping procedures and go paperless to be environmentally conscious. Baronet has been impressed with the way SAP created efficiencies in billing, A/R management and financial reporting. SAP has also given flexibility to some members of the Baronet team to work remotely. This flexibility has been very important during the pandemic but also is an attractive option when trying to recruit the best employees for the Baronet team.
When it came to selecting Baronet Coffee’s next generation’s tools, they took their time reviewing all their options with ERP vendors such as SAP Business One, NetSuite, Sage and Microsoft. While other partners assured Baronet they could provide and meet all their requirements, what impressed Baronet most was Softengine’s industry-focused solution with CoffeeOne. Softengine has partnered with Baronet to make SAP Business One provide exactly what Baronet needs. Softengine has been working with Baronet onsite and remotely to ensure our product is providing Baronet with the tools and information they need to take their business to the next level. One primary factor to CoffeeOne is the green coffee solution element that enables and supports the business processes required for the life of the coffee within SAP Business One. Now, when green coffee transactions occur, they have real-time visibility on how it travels through the system with whatever unique requirements, whether it’s their purchase sizes, data elements unique to the green coffee, capturing landed costs, or the import tracking information.
Additionally, CoffeeOne has a multi-tier volume discount pricing module; traditionally, SAP supports volume discounts for a single item with a specific vendor. Now Baronet can maintain tier pricing across multiple items purchased from its suppliers. As for their core functionality requirements, SAP Business One helps prioritize the combining of historical data, live reports, and production data. The reporting is more meaningful by automating and standardizing the data collection. With SAP Business One, Baronet can check the status of low running materials and re-order goods to stay running at maximum efficiency. It continuously monitors the stock on hand and reduces the chances of delay in order processing by staying ahead of the game. In addition, its warehouse management software works to provide complete inventory traceability for manufacturing seamlessly.
Baronet Coffee relies on the family culture by building their relationships internally as well as with their customers. When they decided on SAP Business One, it was clear; SAP was the only system that could meet both Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and manufacturing needs. For Baronet’s payment processing solution, Softengine relied on a trusted provider with over 18 years of experience and more than 140,000 SMB customers. This processor allows their accounts receivable team to tie in their credit cards while instantly emailing invoices – all previously done in a separate system.
RESULTS
Empowered with CoffeeOne Powered by the SAP Business One solution, Baronet Coffee, who once needed a dozen tools to complete a single producer-to-consumer product, now has a single solution that enables their team to accomplish their tasks in a fraction of time and cost. Automated financial reports for the accounting team remove their spreadsheets’ manual consolidation requirements, simplifying monthly reporting with a couple of clicks in their system. SAP Business One pulls together sales, reporting, CRM, purchasing, roasting manufacturing, and inventory as their business’ core elements into one easy-to-use system to maximize their efficiency. In short, SAP successfully replaced a 30-year-old legacy system for Baronet that has positioned them to grow for the next 90 years.
“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.” Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee.