The Analogue Collective

FreshGold SA is an leading trader of fresh produce in South Africa that operates in the local and international market. It procures fresh produce from selected producers and then sells it to a set of customers. FreshGold does not have extensive automation practices nor computer systems and is heavily reliant on manual intervention to perform key tasks. FreshGolds biggest challenge is gaining visibility of their product as it sits in a distributed environment in relation to its producers. As many as 300 Standard EDI ( electronic data integration) files are sent daily to FreshGold containing pallets of fruit that are available for sale from their producers. To gain visibility of this stock employees spend approximately 3 hours daily validating these files and uploading them into a spreadsheet for stock traders to view. This process is lengthy and errors are often not detected through manual validation leading to orders needing to be changed at the last minute due to stock unavailability. This had lead to a frustration amongst customers. The team has designed a solution (web application) with objectives designed to address the issues facing FreshGold and provide them with maximum business value.
These objectives include:
• Elimination of manual validation procedure through an automated validation process.
• Allow multiple files to be validated simultaneously
• Enable manual EDI file creation for partners without technological capabilities
• Provide accurate stock visibility
• Reduce the current level of errors contained in the file – accuracy of information
• Provide reporting functionality on stock movements
The system created achieves these objectives as files can now be uploaded directly through to the application where they are validated and key information extracted into a table for viewing. In addition to this error free information created users can view stock analytics through the reporting functionality.