IT at the cheese rebels

End consumers and farmers are equally fond of the Käserebellen from Steingaden: In the last ten years, sales have increased eightfold to €40 million and the number of “hay milk farmers” also doubled during this period. For over ten years as well, all important processes in the fast-growing company have been managed via the winweb-food enterprise software. How do the Käserebellen function internally? During a tour of the company, Head of Marketing Matthias Köpf and Head of IT Tino Winterhalter explain this. In Goods receipt 28 million kg of hay milk from a total of 290 farmers are to be recorded annually. Over the course of a year, 2,800t of hay milk cheese are then produced from this in a broad product range from “Organic Mountain Climber Cheese” to “Organic Meadow Cheese”, “Organic Barn Cheese” and innovations such as “Organic Carrot Cheese”. Sales go directly to 25 stores, both in the franchise system and as Own stores led. Other sales channels are the traditional wholesale route to supermarkets, butcher shops and delicatessens. The address database also contains 15,000 end consumers who order via the online shop and are supplied directly. The software that controls all of this is called winweb-food. Since 2002, the company has grown by around eight times and has also become much more complex in its structure. And this is exactly where Winterhalter gives credit to the software partner: “Our system was already set up for this growth. Normally, a company that has grown much larger would also need a completely different software solution.”

Software focus on food

The provider Winweb from Aldenhoven focuses on meat processing. Isn't cheese a completely different business? Network administrator Tino Winterhalter, himself a trained butcher and “Business Economist specializing in Meat” has to smile: “The animal-based foods meat and cheese have many parallels, both technologically and also with regard to distribution through retail and especially the service counter”. Above all, however, the software of a specialist provider from the food sector is already designed for compliance with important legal regulations. Winterhalter mentions food hygiene regulations and consumer protection as keywords. Batch traceability is therefore a requirement equally demanded by legislators, retail and consumers for dairy and meat products.
When asked what had been decisive for the investment, one comes across the connection “cheese and meat”. Tino Winterhalter explains: “The former managing director of the company Schwarzwaldfleisch and the owner of Käserebellen, Sepp Krönauer, have known each other personally for many years. So at the beginning there was the experience of a satisfied user of winweb-food from the meat sector.”

Price-performance

Despite the influence of further positive user experiences, Krönauer initiated a careful price-performance comparison of various providers. And when it became clear that Winweb also offers a good ratio of purchase and maintenance price to the performance provided, Winweb had won this competition.
Today, much of what the integrated enterprise software accomplishes has become an everyday matter of course. “When the system was implemented here in 2002, the smoothConnection of labeling direct from the inventory management system was already a revolution“, recalls Winterhalter, who was working at the company as an external consultant at the time. Current marketing manager Matthias Köpf also still clearly remembers how he was introduced to using the system: “I was simply seated next to it. Then a colleague explained to me what the purchasing and sales screen looked like on the monitor. About five minutes later, I entered data myself. The system really is structured in such a way that the new employee can find their way around easily and intuitively.“
Winterhalter agrees with him and also draws on his experiences from CeBit 2014 in Hanover: “At the trade fair, I took a close look at what is available and what the various systems can do. When I got back home, I was completely certain: I have never seen the core areas of purchasing and sales better than at Winweb.”

Special requests

At over 40 workstations in all areas of the company, employees now work with winweb-food, the “leading system in our company”, as Tino Winterhalter describes it.
The implementation of enterprise software always includes carrying out special requests. Winterhalter: "For example in the areas Storage accounting and Batch tracingwe had special requirements. Winweb implemented these well. And if something was unclear to us, there was always a quick and competent answer.“
Finally, the two cheese rebels Winterhalter and Köpf also give their enterprise software top marks in the areas in which an industry study had already awarded Winweb: It is about the area of training on the system. For this purpose, Trovarit AG from Aachen recently evaluated 48 software providers with the support of RWTH Aachen University. Winweb achieved the highest satisfaction in the area of industry software. Outstanding individual scores refer to “Industry expertise” and “Commitment” (each with a score of 4.77 out of a maximum of 5.00) and “Employee training” (score of 4.69).

www.kaeserebellen.com
www.winweb.de