Location/Region: Escondido, CA
Industry: Computer equipment
Apps implemented: Discuss, Appointments, Knowledge, Sales, Accounting, Documents, Project, Planning, Surveys, Purchase, Inventory, Manufacturing, Quality, Barcode, Sign, Employees, Link Tracker, Calendar, Contacts, Dashboards, Shop Floor, Repairs
Software Replaced: Quickbooks
Number of users: 13
Company size: 16
Hosting type: Online (Saas)
Birthdays are marked by special touches that bring joy and celebration—balloons, streamers, presents, and, of course, the centerpiece of it all: the birthday cake. For some, that cake becomes even more memorable with a personalized touch, like a photograph perfectly printed on its surface. Helping bakeries achieve this level of customization is where companies like Fawkes Engineering shine.
Fawkes Engineering, based in Escondido, California, specializes in creating systems that bring photos to life on cakes. Their innovative solution combines three key components: a touch screen, a computer, and a printer. In the company’s current model, existing technology is repurposed to suit the unique demands of bakeries. For instance, Fawkes Engineering modifies off-the-shelf printers to work with edible media, ensuring safe and high-quality photo printing. Similarly, touch screens are reinforced for durability in busy bakery environments. The computers are custom-assembled using parts like hard drives and media readers, purposefully built to power the seamless photo printing process.
Fawkes Engineering has a unique business model, serving as the contract manufacturer for one sole customer since 2006: a large bakery chain business. This bakery chain has many locations across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, all using Fawkes Engineering’s unique cake printing system. Whenever the chain opens up a new location, Fawkes Engineering sends touch screens, computers, and printers to the bakery headquarters, and the headquarters then sends out the materials to the new location. Fawkes Engineering also ships directly to the various bakery locations in cases where equipment breaks or malfunctions - almost like drop-shipping.
With the bakery chain’s business continuing to expand across Northern America, Fawkes Engineering has been growing alongside it. As the company’s needs changed and evolved, its old software system simply couldn’t keep up. It quickly became clear that Fawkes Engineering needed a more robust and comprehensive ERP solution. Odoo, it turns out, was the perfect fit.
Before Odoo: A recipe for frustration with QuickBooks
Before using Odoo, Fawkes Engineering was using Quickbooks to manage its business operations. Diane Schnoebelen, co-owner of the company along with her husband, says that Quickbooks lacked inventory management and manufacturing capabilities– two of the company’s most crucial daily workflows. She explains that the way the company’s manufacturing process works is that they bring in “raw” printers - or off-the-shelf printers - and ship out “modified” printers to the bakery - printers that have been redesigned to produce edible materials. Fawkes Engineering tracks the movement and inventory of these printers in its warehouse using serial numbers, and Diane says that Quickbooks wasn’t meeting expectations in this area:
“Quickbooks didn’t have as robust of a serial number tracking [as Odoo].”
Diane Schnoebelen
Co-owner of Fawkes Engineering
Before Odoo, Fawkes Engineering used books external from Quickbooks that had instructions on modifying the printers for cake-photo-printing functionality. The disconnect between the instructions and the software proved inefficient for the manufacturing team. Additionally, the company’s old Quickbooks system wasn’t accessible to the entire assembly line team, leading to delayed data input and unreliable inventory counts.
“The way they were doing it in Quickbooks, they only had one person that could access the Quickbooks. I had three to four assembly people, and they would do all this work, and sometimes, the guy who was entering it would choose not to enter it for several days. I’d end up with a lot of ghost inventory, or I wouldn’t know the inventory tracking. It wasn’t easy.”
This lack of up-to-date, real-time data also made it difficult for other teams to perform their job functions, such as ordering more printers, touch screens, or computers to meet order demands. Unreliable information not only slowed down operations but opened up the possibility of lost or wrongly recorded inventory.
“It made it really hard for the procurement person to know what really needed to be purchased if they were using just Quickbooks.”
Another consistent downside of Quickbooks was its hefty cost. The unattainable price point of the software not only hindered the company’s day-to-day flexibility but also made the idea of expanding operations daunting since Fawkes Engineering would have to pay for more users.
“Cost was a big factor also– the expense of Quickbooks. One of the things that caused our problems was we didn’t have every single user in Quickbooks because it was cost-prohibitive.”
Diane Schnoebelen
Co-owner of Fawkes Engineering
While Quickbook’s cost was continuous stress, and inventory and manufacturing workflow issues were occurring daily, Fawkes Engineering’s ultimate breaking point was when they decided to begin designing their own cake photo printer systems. This change was motivated by the increasingly challenging endeavor of adapting off-the-shelf printers to be edible food-compliant, especially with how modern printer technology has changed in recent years. What was an exciting new chapter for Fawkes Engineering proved especially difficult with the limitations of QuickBooks platform:
“One of our pushes to go to Odoo was because we’re in the process of actually designing our own printers specifically for this industry, which is a bigger deal than just taking an off-the-shelf printer and making slight modifications to it.”
Earlier this year, Fawkes Engineering officially went live with Odoo. Diane explains that the process wasn’t without its challenges, given the high volume of information that needed to be transferred over to the new system, but that ultimately, the company got settled in well with Odoo.
Baking efficiency and innovation into every layer
About a year into its journey with Odoo, Fawkes Engineering has already seen tangible benefits from switching to Odoo’s comprehensive ERP system. Having switched away from Quickbooks due to the upcoming endeavor of designing and producing their own printer rather than adapting off-the-shelf ones, Diane discusses the benefit of Odoo’s Manufacturing application and how it assists the team’s operations:
“[We switched to Odoo because of] the anticipation of having much more production. So we were anticipating this new project that we’re doing, and we know that it will require a lot more serial numbers, lot numbers, and management of inventory. And I like the way [that in] Odoo… you can create a little slideshow for the manufacturing floor so they can see the process. There’s a way to keep the processes within Odoo.”
While Fawkes Engineering works towards the upcoming change of making their own printers, one of the company’s current most critical daily workflows is taking off-the-shelf printers and adapting them into “modified” printers. While Quickbooks struggled to support Fawkes Engineering’s needs in this department, Odoo has proven beneficial for the assembly line:
“In Quickbooks, you just do a build assembly; you know the parts, but you don’t know how to put them together. In Odoo, they can put together a manufacturing order and they can see the steps right in Odoo, and I love that.”
During this process, Odoo has also proven that inventory management is better handled with its software. This is compared to the lack of reliable data provided by Quickbooks previously:
“It was more of an inventory procurement management that I feel Odoo gives us more visibility or more real-time data.”
Something that Diane herself loves about Odoo is the analytic accounting feature. This has especially proven useful for tracking the financial analytics of the company’s various products:
“I can tell you a lot of things that I love about Odoo, but it provides something called analytical accounting, so I can do analytics on each of our products pretty easily, which I couldn’t do as well in Quickbooks.”
Accounting, in general, has been significantly improved with Odoo’s integrated nature, allowing Fawkes Engineering’s purchase orders and invoices to be connected to other related documents. This system has been much more efficient than Quickbooks, where documents were located in different folders or computer systems altogether.
“Reconciling bank accounts is so much easier [with Odoo]. There are a lot of things that are easier. And the fact that I can keep the documents with the record in Odoo. When I get a bill, I just upload it to Odoo, and it's there with the payment. I don’t have to have another file on my computer with all the bills; it’s right there, and I can go and look at it. And the communications between my vendors - it's in the record and the purchase order. I love that.”
Odoo’s cloud-based, mobile accessibility has proven useful for Diane, especially when bringing up reports when she’s away from her computer. Diane frequently accesses sales and financial reports, and the flexibility that Odoo has offered her has tangibly impacted the time spent on this task. She says that regarding accessing reports, Odoo has saved her “45 minutes a day.”
“I can have the data at my fingertips.”
Fawkes Engineering’s journey with Odoo highlights the transformative power of the right ERP solution. By addressing inefficiencies, streamlining workflows, and offering greater visibility into operations, Odoo has enabled Fawkes Engineering to focus on what they do best: delivering innovative cake-printing systems that bring joy to celebrations across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. As the company embarks on the exciting new chapter of designing its own printers, Odoo’s scalable and integrated platform ensures they’re well-equipped to handle the challenges and opportunities ahead.
The Sweet Success of Innovation: How Fawkes Engineering Bakes Efficiency with Odoo