Ice cream manufacturer improves stock availability with automation

Devyani Food Industries Pvt. Ltd., has been manufacturing and managing the ice cream brand, “Creambell,” for its parent company, the food and beverages powerhouse R.J. Corp since 2003. Its manufacturing units are at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Kosi near Mathura. It is a major player in the industry with 15% market share in the icecream industry and a pan India presence across 19 states.  The ice cream supplier has a workforce of 200 to 500 employees.

The challenge

For an ice cream supplier of Devyani Food industries’ scale, managing large inventories with distributors and retailers from all over the country becomes critical.  

The process of sales, till the level of the distributor was earlier tracked through the system, but the dealings between the distributor and the retailer ultimately had no records. This meant that the distributor-retailer product sales were not captured and this would cause missed-calculations in the production-planning as well.  “Unless and until I would know of the material being pushed to the retailer, planning the production accurately would not be possible,” Kamal Karnatak, Sr. VP and Group CIO, Devyani Food Industries.

“Prior to the implementation we would receive details regarding the stock and sale position after a fortnight or once a week or sometimes even after a month. We wouldn’t have any real-time stock updates or visibility into the sales force of the distributor,” says Karnatak.

The solution

To get to some clarity with the distributor-retailer sales management, Devyani Foods implemented a saleforce automation solution under the Crembell Sales Empowerment System.

After this system was implemented, the sales team and distributors were equipped with Android smartphones which came with a pre-loaded application. This application enables order-tracking till the final delivery is done. An integrated system like this not only keeps track of the orders but takes care of critical components in this business like the fridges or chillers provided by the company and the stock maintenance. “There are 170 distributors as of today and every distributor would have two to three people to sell under them and so there are around 500-600 devices given out.”

Once the information is fed, there is an automated system that pumps in all the information to the sales portal through a cloud based ERP system. This is a robust and complete system where in the distributor can log in with simple authentication and update the inventory on the portal.  

The benefit

The ice-cream supplier’s integrated system has helped bring in clarity in the information concerning stock-availability and the type of stock in demand. The real-time updates have enabled timely production, too. “I am able to plan production as per the requirements of the distributor, because now I know what quantities are sold in the market. Every month we have an addition of 50-60 distributors.” Karnatak says that now that his company has implemented the system they can manage more distributors and increase market share. “By the end of 2016, we would be touching around 250 distributors and by next year we aim at touching 1000 such distributors.”