With a Seamless Integration between Excel and NetSuite, Imperfect Foods Issues Purchase Orders in a Fraction of the Time
Industry:
Food & Beverages
Headquarters:
San Francisco, CA
Products Used:
CloudExtend Excel for Netsuite
It really has made a huge difference for us. I think I forget that because we have been using it for several years, but I think if we didn’t have CloudExtend there is no way we’d be able to do the amount of buying we do with the same number of resources… we’d have to have an assistant literally just typing POs… It’s really been a huge help.
Purchasing Manager, Imperfect Foods
About
Imperfect Foods was founded in 2015. The company offers imperfect (yet delicious) produce, affordable pantry items, quality eggs, and dairy. Imperfect Foods mission is to eliminate food waste and build a better food system for everyone. They have 300,000 customers and 1,000 employees offering service in 38 states.
Background
Imperfect Foods uses NetSuite as its ERP system. Much of their data resides there, including Purchase Orders. The purchasing team at Imperfect Foods is responsible for producing 200-300 Purchase Orders a week. They needed an efficient way to access purchasing data in Excel that would integrate with NetSuite and eliminate the need to copy/paste and manually type purchase order information, increasing their risk of errors. Excel was the ideal interface for them due to its familiarity, speed in creating and updating records, and the ability to intuitively apply formulas to calculate values.
The Challenge
Imperfect Foods secures imperfect grocery items that do not appeal to typical grocery stores and offers a monthly delivery service to consumers. Megan Langner’s role is purchasing manager for the company. Her team of three produce buyers is responsible for issuing 300 purchase orders every week. The biggest challenge they faced was getting those orders sent out — the purchase order process was lengthy. They ultimately needed to be transferred from a Google sheet to the accounting software they were using. From there it needed to migrate to their purchasing software. None of these systems were working together.
The purchasing team needed to gain efficiencies and move away from spending so much time on manual data entry. Previously, they were securing purchasing data, adding it to a shared google sheet with hundreds of produce items. They would review each individual item and select which met their needs best. They would then compile that data and type each line into Quickbooks. Quickbooks did not have an email function, so they would have to take the information and then add each PO into G Suite to send out by email.
I cannot overstate the impact that CloudExtend Excel has made for our department. Our produce team saves 60-90 hours a week by using it. Our data accuracy has improved significantly and it has given us the ability to scale our department. CloudExtend helps improve our team culture and shortens processes that were previously very lengthy.
Purchasing Manager, Imperfect Foods
The Solution
CloudExtend Excel helps users securely and seamlessly manage NetSuite data in Excel in real-time. Data entry used to take the produce buying team at Imperfect Foods an extra 20-30 hours a week per buyer. Now, they leverage CloudExtend Excel to streamline that process and save significant time.
The Cloud Extend Solution empowers the produce buying team at Imperfect Foods to focus on their primary job of helping farmers and spending time sourcing the best products. CloudExtend also almost entirely removes their data accuracy concerns in the purchase order process.
The Bottom Line
Imperfect Foods was able to use CloudExtend to help scale their business without hiring additional resources. The purchasing team is happy with the much less lengthy purchase order process.
As a organization, Imperfect Foods is now considering implementing CloudExtend Excel within other teams, such as logistics, to improve processes there as well. The company credits CloudExtend Excel with “really helping the buying team grow.”
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