Business Challenge
Volpi Foods, Inc. (Volpi) is a family-owned, global food corporation and America’s oldest manufacturer of authentic Italian meat products. The company was founded in 1902 and has evolved into a specialty food manufacturer with three production facilities, a local café and store, and a commercial wholesale offering for artisan food products.
With business booming and new strategic partnerships being put in place, Volpi realized the future of the business required more than accounting software. The business was ready for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution to handle their growing inventory and manufacturing processes, but they also needed a solution geared toward Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP).
The Solution
After considering various competing products, including Epicor and NetSuite, Volpi decided Microsoft Dynamics GP had the functionality necessary to meet their inventory and manufacturing needs and the flexibility to grow with the business. During the research stage, Volpi shortlisted and selected Turnkey Technologies (Turnkey) to implement Dynamics GP. Volpi chose Turnkey based on their Dynamics GP experience, understanding of the manufacturing industry, and the ability for Turnkey to work on-site at Volpi as needed.
“There were days when our Turnkey consultant was on-site from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.,” says Hambrecht, Director of Technology. “We have always been pleased with Turnkey’s thorough work and devotion to our business. They seem to really care about our overall success.”
Business Benefits
Defined Business Processes
While still a vibrant, family-owned business, Volpi is now a 175-employee global corporation. With that growth comes the need for accountability and collaboration among all employees. The Turnkey team helped Volpi set up and define their business processes and then implemented Dynamics GP to support initiatives. Turnkey continues to consult the executive team on additional automation and functionality to support business growth.
Efficient Purchasing
As the business grew, the total poundage of deliveries received per week had doubled within a short timeframe. Due to the large amounts of non-durable items used in their products, Volpi’s purchasing department was challenged with managing several deliveries within sensitive timeframes.
Dynamics GP keeps information organized and accurate on one platform to support quality production. Using Dynamics GP, Volpi resolves a purchase order in one click, allowing for more efficient purchasing processes through automation, scheduling and tracking. This benefit supports the business’s Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) initiatives to support continued success and expansion.
Significant Time Savings in Reporting
Instead of an Excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs tracking information by week, now the Volpi team can quickly utilize decision-focused smartlists designed using SmartList Builder within Dynamics GP to compare information and confirm accuracy among many departments and production lines.
“We’ve experienced a real, tangible benefit using Dynamics GP when it comes to reporting and analytics,” says Hambrecht. “SmartList-based, up-to-date online querying saves us four to eight hours every week in the purchasing and receiving departments alone.”
More Capabilities on the Horizon
Volpi is continuously evolving the business by evaluating processes while learning more about the possibilities with Dynamics GP. Long having put the “crawl” and the “walk” behind them, Volpi Foods is now sprinting into the “run” phase of the Dynamics GP experience.
“We’ve only just begun to utilize all the power features of the advanced MRP functionality,” says Hambrecht. “Volpi Foods doesn’t plan to slow down any time soon.”
Client Quotes
"Turnkey Technologies is a great partner. They have helped us better define our business processes to accommodate our recent growth. The free user group meetings are a huge benefit!"
“Dynamics GP is userfriendly and easy to learn. Our new Director of Operations mastered Dynamics GP within his first four months at the company. The wealth of information and training materials readily available is a huge benefit of choosing Dynamics GP.”
-Peter Hambrecht, Director of Technology, Volpi Foods, Inc
About Turnkey
Since 1994, Turnkey Technologies has delivered real business process modernization, improvement, and Return on Investment (ROI) to hundreds of businesses from Small-Medium (SMB) to Enterprise. Our experienced team brings deep technical and functional expertise across numerous industries with an emphasis on Defense Manufacturing, Medical Device Manufacturing, Project Services, and more. Valet service and an extraordinary customer experience are the hallmarks of our mission, and we stand ready to deliver the real improvements that our customers need to compete in the 21st century.
