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“The efficiencies and insights resulting from the utilization of SYSPRO are enabling us to expand our marketing efforts from a West Coast concentration to the entire USA.”
-Susan Karl, President and CEO, Annabelle Candy
The Company
Annabelle Candy Company exemplifies the great American success story. The company began operations some 62 years ago when a Russian immigrant began making candy bars in his San Francisco kitchen and selling them outside local movie theatres.
Demand for the tasty bars grew, compelling the immigrant to move operations to a factory. Today, the company, named for the immigrant’s daughter, Annabelle, operates a pristine factory in the San Francisco East Bay City of Hayward, California. It produces such renowned brand bars as Rocky Road, Abba Zaba and Big Hunk and is set to expand its distribution activities from the West Coast to all of the US.
The Challenge
Sixteen years ago, in order to facilitate growth and comply with FDA rules, the company realized the need to computerize and automate inventory tracking as well as accounting operations, which were being performed manually. After an extensive search, the company selected SYSPRO Enterprise Resource Planning software.
The Solution
SYSPRO’s Cash Book enables Annabelle to optimize cash management with system-wide bank reconciliation information on cash inflows and outflows. By providing complete enterprise-wide financial recording, analysis and reporting from all aspects of the business, the General Ledger module gives Annabelle a real-time view of corporate performance.
Annabelle controls inventories and optimizes stock levels via the Purchase Orders module, which also lets the company monitor quality, lead times and costs of purchases in addition to providing comprehensive supplier performance analysis.
With sales activity data from the Sales Analysis module, Annabelle gains a total picture of sales performance as well as sales profitability and sales forecasting. SYSPRO Sales Orders enables Annabelle to enhance customer service through fast, efficient order processing and accurate, timely order fulfillment, while maximizing sales through instant access to information about stock availability, prices and possible substitutions. The Bill of Materials module also facilitates an accurate expected cost against which to track actual production costs. The complete bill forms the basis for material and capacity planning, shop floor control and costing.
Finally, SYSPRO Electronic Data Interchange enables Annabelle to speed the turnaround of orders, while SYSPRO B2B Trading enables Annabelle to gather and consolidate data from the various Annabelle warehouses.
The Result
President and CEO Susan Karl and Vice President of Finance Shelly Craft have attributed much of the company’s rapid growth to their SYSPRO ERP implementation. In fact, the company’s rapid growth in the western United States is now encouraging the company to expand nationally.
Karl and Craft are proud of their choice of SYSPRO and can relate the operational improvements the company has realized since the software’s implementation.
According to Craft, “The results [using SYSPRO software] have far exceeded our expectations”. Karl also states that the efficiencies and insights resulting from the utilization of SYSPRO are enabling the company to expand marketing efforts from a West Coast concentration to the entire USA.
“Throughout every different need, we have a reason to look to and use SYSPRO and it always has our answers.”
–Shelley Craft, VP of Finance, Annabelle Candy Company
