Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Anglia Business Solutions, this month hosted its Platinum Club event at its new premises at Harston Mill, near Cambridge. Held twice a year, the Platinum Club is an opportunity for all of Anglia's Microsoft Navision customers to meet fellow users, obtain the latest product information and learn about how both Microsoft and Anglia intend to take the Microsoft Navision technology into the future.

The event also marked a milestone in Anglia's history, as its new premises were officially opened by Microsoft's Jonathan Hughes, Director of MBS group partners.

Delegates at the event heard Anglia's managing director, David Hurley, summarise current market conditions, the company's performance and its achievements during the last twelve months. Hurley said: "During the year, Anglia has achieved 100 per cent client and employee retention, completed the largest UK Microsoft Navision deployment, and made a successful entry into the fresh produce market with significant new customer wins for its Microsoft Navision LinkFresh FP3 business management solution.”

New Microsoft Navision surround technologies, developed by Anglia Business Solutions, were demonstrated with particular emphasis on how these technologies are being deployed in the fresh produce sector. A 'Pick & Pack' mobile application was demonstrated which could be used to quality check and grade produce as it is picked. Using hand-held mobile devices, the application records the date and time of picking, the quality of the produce and location from which it was picked. This information is then sent using Anglia's Drizzle technology via GPS satellite back to the core Microsoft Navision database. This application eliminates the need for field workers to record the information by hand onto picking sheets, and the subsequent re-keying of this data into the central system. A barcode and RFID scanning application was then shown which quickly identifies the content of any particular pallet of produce using the information recorded on the hand-held device at the time of picking.

“This vital 'produce origin' information is demanded by multiples, which impose high penalties if suppliers do not meet their stringent requirements,” said Anglia.

Richard Jones, Anglia's development director, outlined how Microsoft Biztalk Server 2004 and Microsoft SQL Server, can be implemented to connect a fresh produce company's internal systems to those of their customers. “The major multiples are increasingly pressurising their suppliers to operate in this way using EDI, XML or flatfile data transfer,” he said.

Microsoft’s Hughes updated the group on Microsoft activity in the business solutions market, and what the future holds with regards to new products and research and development. He said that Microsoft's entry into the Business Solutions market was underpinned by $2.5 billion acquisition investment, $2bn annual investment, 1,700 r&d staff, 20 years business applications experience and an established network of some 6,000 partners. Microsoft Business Solutions has more than 2,000 Microsoft Navision partners servicing more than 45,000 customers. Hughes also reassured the group with product development plans for Microsoft Navision through to 2013, and outlined future developments such as Project Green and Longhorn.

Delegates were among the first customers in the UK to see the latest version of Microsoft Navision 4.0, which was launched last month. A live product demonstration outlined some of the enhanced and additional functionality in the new release including; an improved user experience with menu structures and navigation similar to that of Microsoft Outlook, the addition of a manufacturing foundation layer, improvements in financial management functionality and the introduction of advanced business analytics capabilities and key performance indicator charting.

New functionality designed to improve productivity and efficiency include, inter-company postings, un-apply, reversal of journal postings, partial payments, and the addition of a graph component and business notification alerts. The new Manufacturing Foundation layer offers deep visibility into work-in-process, support for order-by-order planning workflow, a graphical production schedule and easy production reporting.

KELGRAY LAUNCHES LABELLING SYSTEM

Kelgray Products Ltd has launched an RFID print and apply labelling system called Easiprint RF.

The printer applicator enables the user to write RFID tags as well as printing traditional thermal labels. And these can then be applied directly to the outer case or pallet by the applicator while travelling along a conveyor line.

The Easiprint RF system will also be available with 802.11b wireless network connectivity, allowing the user to design and print labels from anywhere within the wireless network.

The wireless capabilities also provide the flexibility to move the Easiprint RF system to other areas of the production facility, without being restricted by availability of ethernet points (subject to wireless network coverage).

“We developed this product following requests from a major RFID hardware manufacturer and in response to concerns raised by many of our manufacturing customers on the increasing move towards RFID and WiFi,” said Kelgray managing director Kelvin Smith.

“We felt the best solution was to combine the two technologies thereby providing a future-proof labelling system for our customers.”

IT NEWS IN BRIEF

• A new website that’s dedicated to the practice of soil fumigation for the control of soil dwelling organisms has just been launched by Certis.

“The international website www.certiscleanstart.com is a useful technical guide for growers and agronomists in the high value horticultural crop sectors who are seeking an alternative fumigant to methyl bromide,” said Certis UK’s general manager Peter Hingley.

The launch of the website follows the acquisition by Kanesho Soil Treatment of Basamid (dazomet) from BASF, and the appointment of Certis to distribute the product in Europe (until now Basamid had only been distributed by Certis in the UK). The acquisition has resulted in the development of the Certis CleanStart programmes that show an integrated approach to pest, weed and disease control based on observation, prevention and intervention. It also details application protocols for leafy salads and strawberries.

• Environmental research instrumentation specialist ADC BioScientific Ltd has introduced a fully integrated Open Path Eddy Covariance System (OPEC).

The OPEC system is a long term monitoring device designed for ecophysiological experimentation. It allows researchers to correlate fluctuations in carbon dioxide and water vapour with vertical wind speed to estimate vertical fluxes of the gases around crop or forest canopies.

The system incorporates three major components already established within the research community: the ADC OP-2 open path carbon dioxide and water vapour analyser, the R3-50 sonic anemometer and EDDYMEAS data acquisition and post processing software.

• The Flowers & Plants Association website continues to go from strength to strength. Having steadily attracted an increasing number of visitors every month in 2004, it has now set a new record of more than 130,000 individual users.

The site gives up-to-the-minute information on the current trends in cut flowers and plants as well being a source of information on care and identification. The site, with its simple address, flowers.org.uk is recommended on the BBC website when using their search engine to search 'flowers'.

AV SIGNS UP FOR LINKFRESH FP3

AV Produce Ltd, a supplier of brassicas and salad onions to supermarkets, wholesalers and the food service industry, has selected the LinkFresh FP3 business management solution from Anglia Business Solutions.

Launched earlier this year, LinkFresh FP3 is a Microsoft Navision-based solution developed by Anglia specifically for the fresh produce industry. This implementation handles financial, order processing, consignment accounting, packing and distribution. AV Produce Ltd will use LinkFreshFP3 to replace all existing disparate systems to give it a totally integrated business management system.

“We spent the last 18 months reviewing every solution on the market before deciding on LinkFresh FP3 from Anglia,” said David Tasker, md of AV Produce. “As well as having experience in the fresh produce sector, Anglia took the time to understand my business, my processes and most of all, my people. This solution will give us a base upon which to develop and expand our use of IT. Our goal is to grow the business by operating more efficiently and providing a better service to our customers using the people and knowledge we already have”.

Anglia has already completed the solution model for the project and deployment is expected to be completed during the first quarter of 2005.

Bob Rose, business development manager of Anglia’s fresh produce division, said: “AV Produce quickly recognised the depth of functionality and massive flexibility inherent in the technology compared with alternative offerings. We are very pleased to work with them in the deployment of a totally integrated solution that will provide them with a significant competitive edge in their sector.”

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

Organisations now generally accept that we live in the information age. However, the ability of many companies to accurately monitor key performance indicators across the enterprise is extremely limited. The root cause of this in the fresh produce industry is the lack of integration of the various systems that manage the processes throughout the business.

Many companies in the industry operate on a mixture of accounting systems, spreadsheets, specialist databases and manual processes. This typically leads to the creation of islands of data. As the business expands, it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to keep track of what is really going on with the products and services provided to an increasingly demanding customer base. In such scenarios, business managers have to run faster and faster to meet client expectations.

The Herculean task of constantly monitoring product quality and delivery commitments falls to the senior managers within the business. As a result, it is not uncommon to find that the directors spend an inordinate amount of time extracting data from a myriad of sources. They therefore become the most expensive administrators within the business. Furthermore, while focused on the day to day control aspects, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture on driving the progress of the company.

Business intelligence is the ability to dynamically measure and monitor all aspects associated with the defined business processes within the company.

This is now beginning to play a key part in the management of fast moving businesses such as the fresh produce industry. In the past, this has been difficult to do as the reporting tools have been relatively complex or the packaged applications too specific. However, the arrival of powerful integrated business applications into the sector will greatly help organisations currently struggling to cope with the task.

The key elements that make up a business intelligence solution are performance indicators, alerts, reports and company information. For example, you may wish to dynamically measure the finished product yield from consignments supplied to packhouses as they are fulfilled. It may be useful to be automatically alerted when the consignment profitability drops below expected levels. If the product supply chain is adversely affected by weather or transport factors, it may be useful to have an early warning system that enables you to take pre-emptive action. Day by day profitability indicators may help avoid nasty surprises at the end of the month.

Modern integrated solutions cope with these requirements through the delivery of dashboard technologies. Typically, these automatically produce trend information on the key performance indicators of the business as events unfold. The key to their usefulness is that the indicators that they measure are aligned to the goals of the organisation. More importantly, they should be updated to reflect changes as they happen throughout the organisation. This is in marked contrast to the current view of information delivery which is little more than historic reporting of aging data.

Today’s reality in the fresh produce sector is that customers will continue to exert more pressure on suppliers to meet even more stringent quality and delivery standards at lower prices.

To counter this, companies will need to be able to gauge the performance of the organisation at all levels. Through the use of integrated solutions, business intelligence will play a key role by providing one version of the truth easily accessible throughout the enterprise. In today’s ever more competitive environment, this seems more like a survival strategy than a luxury. As somebody once said: “If you think that knowledge is expensive, try ignorance”.

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