IBM Case Studies The Chefs’ Warehouse: Serving up the right ingredients to facilitate growth

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	The Chefs’ Warehouse: Serving up the right ingredients to facilitate growth IBM

The Chefs’ Warehouse: Serving up the right ingredients to facilitate growth

IBM

Technology Category	Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries	Food & Beverage
Applicable Functions	Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases	Inventory Management Supply Chain Visibility
Services	System Integration Training
Challenge	The Chefs’ Warehouse, a specialty food distributor, was facing challenges in integrating new foodservice businesses rapidly and meeting the company’s high service, payment, and on-time delivery standards. The company had several ERP and best-of-breed solutions in place, but they were not sufficient to support the company's growth strategy. The company needed a solution that would provide visibility to inventory management, financial integration, process automation, and improvements for operating business units. Read More
About Customer	The Chefs’ Warehouse is a specialty food distributor with over 30 years of experience sourcing quality products for high-end chefs. The company operates in major metropolitan areas across the United States and Canada, supplying the finest restaurants, hotels, caterers, and gourmet stores in North America. In the highly cost-conscious restaurant trade, outstanding service is a key differentiator for The Chefs’ Warehouse. This means knowing which of almost 28,000 products it has in stock, and delivering stock to chefs reliably and promptly – as they may have hungry diners waiting. Read More
Solution	The Chefs’ Warehouse implemented Oracle JD Edwards Enterprise One, a solution recommended by IBM. The solution was designed to suit the future business model of the company. The project aimed to enable the integration of new acquisitions and facilitate The Chefs’ Warehouse’s organic growth more effectively by transitioning them to the standard JD Edwards platform rapidly and easily. This would provide enterprise-level visibility of inventory across the entire family of companies. The project started by migrating business units in the Southeast, then the West Coast to the core financials and distribution modules. For those units already operating JD Edwards solutions, the migration included renumbering the Chart of Accounts. Additionally, IBM provided assistance with system configuration and optimization, application performance, and the technical services required for installation and deployment. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

Applicable Industries

Food & Beverage

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Use Cases

Inventory Management

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

System Integration

Training

Challenge

The Chefs’ Warehouse, a specialty food distributor, was facing challenges in integrating new foodservice businesses rapidly and meeting the company’s high service, payment, and on-time delivery standards. The company had several ERP and best-of-breed solutions in place, but they were not sufficient to support the company's growth strategy. The company needed a solution that would provide visibility to inventory management, financial integration, process automation, and improvements for operating business units.

About Customer

The Chefs’ Warehouse is a specialty food distributor with over 30 years of experience sourcing quality products for high-end chefs. The company operates in major metropolitan areas across the United States and Canada, supplying the finest restaurants, hotels, caterers, and gourmet stores in North America. In the highly cost-conscious restaurant trade, outstanding service is a key differentiator for The Chefs’ Warehouse. This means knowing which of almost 28,000 products it has in stock, and delivering stock to chefs reliably and promptly – as they may have hungry diners waiting.

Solution

The Chefs’ Warehouse implemented Oracle JD Edwards Enterprise One, a solution recommended by IBM. The solution was designed to suit the future business model of the company. The project aimed to enable the integration of new acquisitions and facilitate The Chefs’ Warehouse’s organic growth more effectively by transitioning them to the standard JD Edwards platform rapidly and easily. This would provide enterprise-level visibility of inventory across the entire family of companies. The project started by migrating business units in the Southeast, then the West Coast to the core financials and distribution modules. For those units already operating JD Edwards solutions, the migration included renumbering the Chart of Accounts. Additionally, IBM provided assistance with system configuration and optimization, application performance, and the technical services required for installation and deployment.

Impact #1	The Chefs’ Warehouse has grown significantly in the space of three years. During that time, the company has continued to build its reputation on its quality of service and efficiency.
Impact #2	The company is now positioned to take advantage of deeper use of the One View Reporting tool for mining data, as well as integrate JD Edwards’ capabilities with the e-commerce solution.
Impact #3	The Chefs’ Warehouse is extending the JD Edwards solution to each of its existing and new locations in turn. The company has formed a deployment and integration team that is building in-house expertise and experience, assisted by training and skills transfer from IBM.

Impact #1

The Chefs’ Warehouse has grown significantly in the space of three years. During that time, the company has continued to build its reputation on its quality of service and efficiency.

Impact #2

The company is now positioned to take advantage of deeper use of the One View Reporting tool for mining data, as well as integrate JD Edwards’ capabilities with the e-commerce solution.

Impact #3

The Chefs’ Warehouse is extending the JD Edwards solution to each of its existing and new locations in turn. The company has formed a deployment and integration team that is building in-house expertise and experience, assisted by training and skills transfer from IBM.

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Overview

The Chefs’ Warehouse: Serving up the right ingredients to facilitate growth

Operational Impact