Social, ethical and environmentally responsible fresh produce suppliers DPS was established 40 years ago, working then with just a handful of regions. Today it supplies the UK’s largest supermarket chains and sources from over 40 countries, from as far afield as New Zealand to around the corner in Kent. In today’s market, fresh produce no longer takes weeks to deliver, and once-exotic fruit, such as mangoes, are now a household fruit. As times change, DPS works hard to stay on top of evolving tastes.
Partnering with the best growers across both hemispheres means that DPS is able to meet demand for consistent, high quality fruit throughout the year. Continually striving to minimise the distance from farm to fruit bowl so that all of their produces arrives looking as fresh as when they were picked.
DPS fruit can travel anywhere from 11 to 11,000 miles. Whether bringing Sharon Fruit from South Africa, or cherries from Chile, everything possible is done to pick, pack, and deliver the best possible produce. The company’s lean and direct model means that customers pay no unnecessary costs.
DPS prides itself on full traceability and value food safety and security. To achieve these goals, the Management Team realised it needed more effective insight into all business processes. Historically, DPS carried a heavy burden with the manual administration of sales data and forecasts, plus was also reliant on Excel data entry and manipulation to produce its management reporting. This was time consuming and ineffective.
We had a requirement for more and more accurate information across the business, from financial, to technical, to operational, from both suppliers and customers. We also needed to schedule information and email reports and analysis to strict deadlines. Due to the nature of the business, ethical audits are a high priority, so this reporting process needed to be streamlined to help the business grow. Another requirement was the integration of supplier data into our own ERP system and for external stakeholders to access the data.
Hamesh Luthra, Business Systems and IT Manager, DPS
The DPS ‘wish-list’ included:
Utilising SAP BusinessObjects® and SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, DSCallards helped DPS implement a solution to discover, cleanse and integrate its disparate data to make it available for fast real-time analysis. This enabled DPS to:
This project has been a key part in our process of continuous improvement. Part of it has been an exercise in ensuring that customers like Tesco, are seeing us drive their dashboard reporting and analysis forward. Even though the dashboards presented to customers are more about top-line information and KPIs, it is clear that the data is available should they need to see more detail. This project has inspired and increased our customer confidence in our delivery excellence. The solution is assuring and deepening our relationships with key customers.
Karen Whiting, Global Technical Compliance and Due Diligence Manager
We believe that the SAP BusinessObjects dashboarding and clear visibility of data, serves to fire up our customers’ imagination. We will continue to work with DSCallards and SAP to evolve our Business Intelligence, analytics and data visualisation as the landscape continually changes.
Hamesh
