THE COMPANY
First Milk is a wholly British farmer-owned dairy co-operative with creameries based in the Lake District and South West Wales. The company produces award-winning cheddar, regional cheeses, dairy ingredients, and market fresh milk through collaborative milk sourcing and supply chain management services.
First Milk has been using Cedar Bay’s Automated Data Collection solution since 2016. Since then, the decision was made to upgrade their ageing IFS Applications™ 7 installation to IFS Applications 10 hosted in a modern Oracle cloud-based environment. First Milk’s recognised this upgrade as an opportunity to review and simplify business processes and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) with zero modifications.
THE CHALLENGE THAT FIRST MILK FACED
Back in 2009, First Milk installed IFS Applications 7 which suited their business needs and objectives at the time. However, as the business has evolved since then First Milk was receiving a poor return on their initial investment and needed IFS Applications 10 to be able to support their current level of operation and assist them in their future growth.
Over the years, First Milk has used many modifications to their IFS Applications 7 solution. A key focal point of this re-implementation project was to remove these modifications and replace them with core IFS functionality, utilising latest best practice. A change in First Milk’s business model demanded improvements to these processes to deliver benefits and support the organisation moving forward.
Upgrading would provide an opportunity to realign these processes and refresh training with all users.
HOW CEDAR BAY MET THE CHALLENGE
The Cedar Bay team formulated a solution to satisfy First Milk’s business requirements and provided support to the First Milk team during the process of implementing their upgrade plan to IFS Applications 10. This fresh solution is exactly what First Milk required to support their modern business needs.
With 193 named users, it was vital to design a solution with modifications removed and replaced using standard IFS Applications 10 functionalities. Cedar Bay worked with First Milk to identify best practise solutions and, where appropriate, challenged processes to ensure the most effective solution was put in place. There was a strong emphasis throughout the migration on cleansing the data to ensure that the new system was based on a stable platform, reflecting the fresh design and associated data.
Throughout the implementation of IFS Applications 10, the Cedar Bay team were able to provide First Milk with a solution to support and reflect their current business needs; offering a platform whereby continuous improvement could be implemented, with the company seeing their return on investment increase.
As First Milk approached go-live, Cedar Bay provided a supportive role in the later stages of the implementation process, to ensure that all staff at First Milk were fully trained, resulting in an overall rise in systems and process knowledge throughout the business. Updated hardware also helped to support the changes at First Milk, ensuring that the new IFS Applications 10 solution was accompanied with the latest and most suitable hardware to allow for best results and ease of use.
THE RESULTS
First Milk hit their target go-live date and improved their customer communications, meeting their mission of creating a customer focused solution. This now positions the business to support growth plans and focus on wider digital transformation. This implementation has helped standardise processes for future staff; with both standard systems and improved training materials.
THE FUTURE
First Milk hit their target go-live date and improved their customer communications, meeting their mission of creating a customer focused solution. This now positions the business to support growth plans and focus on wider digital transformation. This implementation has helped standardise processes for future staff; with both standard systems and improved training materials.
