At FlexiBake, we believe that all bakeries can benefit from using bakery software. With that being said, many bakeries still use ERP software that has been designed for food manufacturing as opposed to bakeries.
There are many reasons people should choose an ERP software dedicated to their production industry. We’ve asked around and here are the most common complaints people had when trying to use an ERP software that was not designed for baking and food manufacturing.
“When I tried to explain the fermentation process for my sourdoughs to the product specialist for a non-specialized ERP software, they did not understand the importance of being able to track process lead times.”
This is very common because, if you think about what many manufacturers produce, they only need to track how long the labour and production line will take. Whether it’s bolts or fabric, they don’t need a specific amount of time to sit in a proofer, so this concept would be difficult to try to set up without having product batch and lead times. Bakery software and Food ERP software, like FlexiBake, has been designed to track each process of the batch. The logic behind the ERP software knows that with a three-day lead time, your starter should be prepared two days before the bread can be delivered… [read more]
“It’s very difficult to track items like frosting or cake bases, where we make them in advance and use from the inventory. Most non-specialized ERP software doesn’t easily let you set up partial processes.”
Again, this is common with non-specialized ERP software because usually when a manufacturer starts a new item, it will run down a production line from start to finish and be stored as a completed item.
Specialized software allows you to set up many steps and processes such as: creating a whole wheat dough which can then be allocated into different sized buns and loafs, or mixing a bin of cream cheese frosting and storing it on hand in order to use every time you make red velvet cake… [read more]
“When I was trying to figure out how to bend the non-specialized ERP software to fit my business, the product specialist was not able to help me because they did not understand the food industry or my processes.”
Non-specialized ERP software is used in so many different type of production facilities, it would actually be surprising if the person you work with during implementation fully understands baking and food manufacturing processes.
In food manufacturing alone, there are so many ways to specialize, such as: bread baking, cake making, juice pressing, butchering, etc. The way FlexiBake handles this is by having our training and implementation agents become experts in 1 of 3 different type of fields: Fresh production (often breads or similar items), Frozen/Long Shelf Life production (usually cakes, pastries, candies), and unique production (this can vary from butchering through to cold pressing and agriculture)… [read more]
In reality, this just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reason you should choose an ERP software dedicated to the baking and food manufacturing industry. If you have any questions or comments, let us know!