Company Name: STOP Spices

Location: Belgium, Europe

Industry: Food & Beverage, Wholesale and Distribution

Established: 1954

Company Size: <50

Odoo Users: <50

Hosting Type: On Premise

Apps: CRM, Sales, Purchase, Accounting, Invoicing, Logistics, Quality, Documents.

Implementing Partner: The O-Team

Based in Belgium and with a presence beyond its borders, STOP Spices has decades of expertise in processing and selling herbs, spices, and blends. In the highly regulated and quality-driven food industry, it is critical to use the right digital tools to ensure efficiency and traceability. Therefore, the company chose to give up the outdated ERP previously used to move on to Odoo's modern, innovative, open-source management system. 

Looking for an open-source ERP to power STOP Spices’ quality-driven manufacturing

Founded in 1954, STOP Spices is a Belgian family-owned company that provides herbs, spices, and blends to the entire food industry, while acting as a partner for the development, production, and packaging of consumer private-label products in Belgium and the surrounding countries. Putting quality first, the company combines knowledge and techniques to meticulously select and process the products, only adding the necessary ingredients, and to create unique blends tailored to the customer’s needs. 

Using the ERP program Kriyan, STOP Spices was struggling to manage the business because of this outdated system that was costly in terms of service and not open-source, and didn’t provide production planning or proper reporting tools. 

The team started investigating new software options, hoping to find the one solution that could save time, increase efficiency, improve manufacturing workflows, and centralize and automate processes. 

Our search primarily focused on ERP solutions using an open-source model, as our entire quality management system is built on data originating from the ERP platform. On top of this ERP data, we run custom-developed in-house applications, which requires full access, transparency, and extensibility of the underlying system. Given the limited availability of mature open-source ERP solutions at the time, the comparison phase was relatively short and conclusive. Odoo clearly matched our technical and architectural requirements. In addition, the discussions with Peter Langenberg from The O-Team and the concrete implementation possibilities that were presented made it evident early on that Odoo was the right strategic choice for us.” - Isabelle Van Damme - Managing Director at STOP Spices

Odoo was then chosen because this management software is open-source, offers flexibility to adapt to the company’s own quality systems, provides a user-friendly interface, and contains real-time dashboards. But also, Odoo has a new version released every year and is continuously seeking improvements across its applications and features. 

A phased, secure, smooth transition to Odoo’s management system

In August 2014, STOP Spices conducted preliminary discussions with Peter Langenberg from The O-Team, an Odoo partner. The idea was to explain the company’s existing workflows and express the current needs and requirements in terms of process optimization. 

From there, The O-Team proposed a tailored approach, both concrete and well-structured, to implement Odoo’s platform smoothly taking into account the operational needs. Over a couple of months, STOP Spices deliberately ran both management systems, Kriyan and Odoo, and completed the year-end closing in both accounting tools, in order to ensure a hassle-free transition as well as full data consistency and correctness. 

In January 2015, STOP Spices officially launched its Odoo platform, starting operationally and financially with full confidence. 

Using Odoo allowed STOP Spices to save one full working day per week

Transitioning to Odoo to manage operations and workflows has been a very good decision that STOP Spices made. First of all, it has been a way to simplify process monitoring activities and to ensure that every employee, at every workstation, can digitally record all required data. 

The team highlights some key benefits, such as:

Centralization of all areas of the business within a single all-in-one system;

Increase in efficiency, with a better production planning that went from taking 2 hours per day to 20 minutes per day, and up-to-date view of the inventory;

One full working day in terms of time savings from an administrative perspective, reallocated to improved production follow-up and additional controls;

Ability to meet the increasing administrative and traceability requirements within the food industry without the need to hire additional staff; 

Decrease of the duplication of work and errors; 

Real-time reporting with information shared through open-source exports; 

Internal management of accounting entries and follow-ups, which enabled the external accountant to shift from data entry to a controlling and advisory role;

Room for scalability ensuring only the necessary modules are in use, but with the possibility of modular growth.

The next step for us is to implement AI for faster processing of order forms, quicker accounting processes, and better preparation of monthly accounting closings.” - Isabelle Van Damme - Managing Director at STOP Spices