Built for the Long Haul: 12 Years of Evolving Data Insights and Reporting.
Central Foods has trusted Octelas since 2013. When Covid hit, they didn’t panic — they plugged deeper into their data. With staff furloughed and decisions critical, they had what others didn’t: 1-click clarity.
The Challenge
“Like most businesses, the lockdown in March up-ended all of our plans for the year. Suddenly, to steady the ship, the focus was on cash-flow and stock turnover but, with many of our key staff on furlough, we had even fewer resources than usual. Having installed and relied upon the Octelas Business Reporting software from illuminis since 2013, we called in the team to help us. As we build the business back from the impact of the pandemic, it will be more important than ever to be confident in our management decisions. To help with these, it is will be essential to drill down into our business data, on a daily basis, so that we can spot underlying trends as they occur and react accordingly.”
Gordon Lauder, Managing Director, Central Foods Limited
The Company
Founded in Northampton in 1996 by Gordon and Alison Lauder, Central Foods Limited distributes frozen food to the UK foodservice industry. The company offers more routes to market than any other UK foodservice supplier, serving over 240 independent, plus national and regional, wholesalers and larger end-user caterers across the entire foodservice industry. The customer service-driven business has grown steadily, recording a turnover in 2018 of over £30million, and, pre-Covid-19, delivering up to 64,000 cases every week.
How Octelas helped deliver the data
Central Foods relies on the sophisticated Navision ERP software to manage its day to day operations. Octelas by Illuminis extracts and then manipulates the data captured by Navision, delivering detailed, real-time management reporting to Gordon and his team. Pre-Covid-19, gaining very granular reporting in areas such as credit-control and product “use by” dates for stock management purposes seemed unnecessary. Lockdown changed all of that and a daily focus, in real time, on the state-of-play in these key areas became critical.
The Solution
Octelas provides a straight-forward solution by pulling any or all of the data sources of the business into a single database to create customised reporting.
Illuminis Founder and Managing Director, Paul North, comments: “A key design feature of Octelas is flexibility. We were already pulling large amounts of data from Navision every day and so joining in aged debtors and the stock “use by” dates was a simple task. It meant that we could deliver the reporting Gordon needed within just a couple of days.
To be right on top of what is happening day-by-day, accessing business reports easily and quickly is crucial. Using Octelas, Gordon relies on just 4 icons on his desktop to give him the information he needs with a single click. Likewise, when the team is back to full strength, everyone can immediately get the information they need on a PC, i-pad or smartphone and share vital information to work smarter in the future.
“It’s probably our number one piece of software without a doubt”
Gordan Lauder
Managing Director
