Bee Maid Honey: Abuzz About Sage PFW
In 1950, a few beekeepers from the sun-washed prairies of western Canada agreed to collaborate and sell their honey under a single brand. Their cooperative grew and eventually joined with similar groups to become Bee Maid Honey Ltd., Canada’s largest marketer of consumer-packaged honey. Bee Maid prides itself on selling the lightest and tastiest clover honey in the world.
Because Bee Maid pays its members based on the quality and color of its honey, careful tracking of incoming deliveries is essential. The cooperative must also monitor the origin of each jar of honey for quality control-purposes. The original in-house system used for finances could not provide the detailed batch information necessary to meet changing business needs. Bee Maid hired an outside consultant to perform a business study, and, on their recommendation, installed the Sage PFW ERP system.
A Very “Sweet” System
Sage PFW now tracks virtually all operations at Bee Maid. When a member delivers honey to one of the plants, each barrel is labeled with the beekeeper’s name, color, and moisture content of honey, number of pounds in the lot, and location in inventory. Results of purity tests are also recorded in the system. Soon raw material data will include bar code information from within the Inventory Pro and Formulas modules.
Manufacturing scheduling is performed by Sage PFW for each of Bee Maid’s brands, and for its private label products. The Formulas module in Sage PFW determines which raw materials to pull for production, depending on product. The system also identifies the components, such as labels, lids, bottles, and cases required to produce finished product.
Swarm of Benefits
The system manages all financial functions, including general ledger, payables, receivables, purchase order, and currency conversion processing. “Sage PFW lets us do ad hoc financial reporting, something that was impossible before,” says Tim Banting, manager of information systems. “It allows us to divide districts into profit centers, where we record internal production, marketing, sales, and transportation costs by region. We now prepare sales reports every month instead of every quarter, with data available only three days after month-end closing.
"Without Sage PFW, we would not have the tools we need to manage effectively in today’s competitive environment.”
“Improved financial reporting is the greatest benefit we’ve received from Sage PFW,” Banting continues. “Our reports are now timelier and provide management with an important tool for making effective business decisions. The software has allowed us to expand, because we can now see exactly where costs can be trimmed, and where we have opportunities for growth. This has permitted far-range business planning for better strategic positioning.”
Stock levels and inventory costs are easy to determine with Sage Sage PFW. “Using inventory control features, the system alerts us when items in stock are running low, so we will never run out of anything,” says Banting. “And since the costs of production are integrated with our financial system using direct links from the Inventory Pro, Production, and Premier Ledger modules, we know exactly what each run costs.”
Proving Purity is Painless
Banting attributes Bee Maid’s success in particular markets to the new system. “Consumers are very particular about the quality of the food they eat, and do not want contaminants or chemicals,” he notes. “White clover honey from Western Canada is prized around the world-and sells at premium prices-because of its color, texture, flavor, and reputation for purity. Sage PFW gives us very tight controls on quality through production formulas, and lets us track a specific jar of honey right back to the beekeeper.”
Banting links much of Bee Maid’s success to its fully integrated financial and manufacturing system: “Without Sage PFW, we would not have the tools we need to manage effectively in today’s competitive environment.”
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