Rhino Foods, Inc. – SoftSelect

Product: Ice cream novelties, inclusions and other specialty food products.
Number of Employees: 140
Years in Business: 20+
Location: Burlington, VT

Situation

Rhino Foods, Inc. manufactures ice cream novelties, ice cream inclusions, and other frozen products in their Burlington, Vermont facility and serves national and international markets. Privately held, Rhino has experienced consistent growth in sales revenues to over $20,000,000 and anticipates this growth to continue. Rhino worked with VMEC previously on strategic planning projects and through the VMEC business-mapping project, it became clear that the current software situation was not sufficient to meet their long-term goals.

The company has been using a financial package with an integrated manufacturing element since 1992, but as the company grew, separate custom databases were created to fill in the functionality gaps. Management and users recognized this multiple software model was not efficient and agreed on the need for a single-source of information and integrated environment now offered in ERP systems. In order to meet the needs, demands and requirements of their clients and regulatory agencies, the new ERP system has to replace functionality of the existing applications, provide new functionality through integration of information from a single data source supporting CRM and Quality Management, and requires implementation of automated data capture for inventory transactions primarily in the Shipping & Receiving departments.

Project/Solutions

The process of investigating and selecting a software product can be cumbersome and time-consuming, so Jayne Magnant, Rhino’s Director of IT looked to VMEC for assistance. VMEC worked with IT, and a cross functional team from Rhino, to build the initial long list of potential software products using the SoftSelect™ process. Using SoftSelect™’s project management approach, the search process was broken down into phases and members of the cross functional team varied throughout. This resulted in departments outside of IT recognizing this was not solely an IT implementation, but an entire company process, and generated buy-in from across all sectors of the company.

Results

Through a period of research and demos, Rhino has selected an ERP package they are confident will meet their needs and long-term goals. As part of a $300,000 investment in capital improvements, Rhino Foods is in the initial stages of a 6-month implementation and plans to go live with the new software system the end of January 2006. In the future, Rhino Foods sees every employee in the company benefiting from the new ERP system, which integrates technology and communication of daily results, making it easier to do their jobs and become more efficient.