There is no question that QuickBooks is a great accounting software for small to medium food distribution businesses, but what do you do when your company’s needs start to pull a little at the seams, when your operations start to become more robust? The answer may not be scrapping QuickBooks and starting all over again with a whole new solution, but instead bringing in complimentary software to draw more functionality from your systems.

When searching through seas of software, it’s important to be wary of cookie cutter solutions that pledge the world by saying they can fit into a variety of industries when, in reality, they leave little to be desired. For those hunting down software that will improve operations in the food distribution industry while simultaneously filling some of the holes that QuickBooks can leave behind, it is important to find a multi-faceted solution that offers the following:

Automatic Truck Routing – Avoid the manual, time-consuming processes that come with old-school methods of logistics. Mapping out routes and creating time-tables after manually putting orders into sequences can be a task of the past.  With automatic truck routing integrated into IT systems, organizations can save time, reduce errors, and improve the efficiency of their shipping and distribution.

Product Tracking – This technology is monumental for food manufacturers. Being able to track shipments that have potential contaminants quickly and efficiently has become a necessity. With the latest line of produce fiascos, the US Food and Drug Association (FDA) have made a considerable number of new policies to ensure that food distributors have this ability.

Pick Lists – With more organized pick lists that don’t require multiple reports, companies can increase the efficiency of warehouse workers, avoid duplicate item pulls, and decrease the number of times workers have to flounce in and out of freezer and refrigerator zones. Enhanced integration also allows mangers to see inventory quantities, out of stock information, order history guides, and more.

Catch Weights – Being able to input the exact weight of food products bought from various locations has a couple major benefits for food distributors. First, there is an added layer of traceability. Very few meat orders measure the same, after all. Second, when catch-weights are stored, the prices of items can be better tracked. After all, seafood and livestock prices fluctuate daily. Now, workers no longer have to manually change amounts to keep up.

Overall, organizations need reliable software that not only integrates with existing solutions, like QuickBooks, but also meets the needs of the food distribution industry. SR²Food from SR²Software is a competitive solution that offers traceability and enhanced functionality to improve the efficiency of your workers and overall operations. Explore what SR²Food can offer your business. Contact one of our SR²Software experts today at 866.245.6216!

Take a moment and allow me to introduce you to the future of distribution: robots. If you’re imagining a scene from Terminator, or if you’re just a fan of the soon-to-be old school methods of packing and shipping, then here’s something to consider. On average, the typical warehouse worker spends 75-90% of all their time searching warehouses for items to fill orders.

For companies like Amazon that have around 150 million items that they organize, manage, and sell in their warehouses, it’s easy to see how workers can actually get lost searching for products. There are billions upon billions of possible order combinations, each of which require individual attention. So, how are robots going to help? Welcome to the world of delivery drones, where workers can instruct programmable robots to retrieve objects for them. It’s like playing fetch with the smartest dog in the world.

How do they work? From each picking station, workers send out 4×4 square foot robots that measure around 12 inches in height. These little buggers keep track of the exact location of items, drive right under the shelves that the needed items rest on, and lift them. They then carry the requested shelf to the waiting personnel working to fill orders. When they’re done, these robots drop the shelves off and then move on to the next item or order. With these delivery drones, distributors can almost double the efficiency of their shipping departments.

Of course, not every company is Amazon; not every company can afford million dollar robot delivery systems whizzing around their warehouses. However, all is not lost for smaller food distributors. Companies like SR²Software are designing solutions that enhance warehouse efficiency for a price tag that’s around 10 times less expensive than any other system out on the marketplace today.

SR²Food Software, designed for food distributors, helps companies optimize the performance of their employees by increasing distribution center efficiencies. These new technologies are budget-friendly and fulfill client needs while providing some of the technological perks that customers in today’s competitive marketplace expect. These systems give your company the brain of a robot without the exorbitant costs.

To discover how these systems can boost your food distributing prowess, contact a SR²Software expert today at 866.245.6216!