Lawson QuickStep Food and Beverage to help drive Northern Ireland-based food manufacturer’s business strategy

Lawson Software has announced that W.D Irwin & Sons (Irwin’s), Northern Ireland’s independent bakery, has signed a contract to implement Lawson QuickStep Food and Beverage, a pre-configured enterprise software suite, coupled with Lawson Business Intelligence to help improve business processes and provide improved transparency across Irwin’s supply chain. The application package will run on an IBM iSeries platform. 

Irwin’s is Northern Ireland’s largest indigenous wholesale bakery, specializing in the production of a wide range of breads, breakfast goods, cakes and biscuits – including signature brands like Rankin Selection traditional Irish breads, Guinness Whole Grain Bread, and Irwin’s Nutty Krust, which it distributes to leading retailers across the Republic of Ireland the United Kingdom.

Irwin’s operates in an extremely competitive environment, so the company must focus on product innovation and on increasing volume while improving cost control to combat lower gross margins. By implementing the Lawson system, Irwin’s expects to improve productivity and enhance customer service through better capabilities for supply chain planning and execution, improved supplier relationship management and higher purchase efficiency. The Lawson system will also help reduce administration time, and improve performance reporting and monitoring.

The implementation agreement follows the use of Lawson Opportunity Analyzer during Spring 2007. The Opportunity Analyzer (OA) tool and methodology enabled the management at Irwin’s to set practical business performance targets and identify, in advance, potential financial and non-financial gains before committing capital expenditure to new business process improvement projects. Through this initiative, Lawson was able to demonstrate identify potential financial benefits from implementing an enterprise management solution and related best practices.

“A key aspect of our growth strategy is based on maximizing our internal efficiencies to deliver significantly enhanced service delivery across our customer base, which has seen rapid growth particularly within our export markets,” said Bill Brown, Chief Executive, Irwin’s. “We needed a solution that had the flexibility and functionality to scale with us as we grow across these important markets, which is why the QuickStep Food and Beverage was the right choice for us. Lawson has the industry-specific functionality and expertise we need to help us execute on our technology and overall business strategies faster and with greater simplicity.”

In addition to QuickStep Food and Beverage, Irwin’s is planning to implement Lawson Business Intelligence, which is designed to provide organisation-wide reporting and analysis via role-based dashboards, delivering relevant information to employees at all levels, who can then make better and faster decisions to help improve corporate performance.

“This agreement with Irwin’s represents the kind of corporate technology strategy and vision that will help a company get the most out of its IT investment and will help them make better, more informed decisions around managing its supply chain,” said Travis White, senior vice president strategy and planning, EMEA, Lawson.

Lawson Professional Services will provide implementation and consultation services for Irwin’s.