Cybake forms alliance with Parallel Purchasing to reduce bakers’ costs
Bakery software leader Cybake has formed a strategic alliance with Birmingham-based food industry procurement specialist Parallel Purchasing.
Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will now work together on procurement cost-saving projects for clients in the baking sector. Parallel Purchasing will also now use Cybake as its primary procurement software application for independent craft bakeries.
Cybake is a cloud bakery software system that is used by retail and wholesale commercial bakers to process orders and manage production, invoicing, deliveries and more.
Parallel Purchasing is a rapidly growing start-up that works with SME bakery and food manufacturing businesses on procurement. The company’s clients typically save between 10% and 15% on the cost of goods, services or works.
Parallel Purchasing operates what it describes as a zero-cost model. This means that the company takes a fixed percentage of the savings it makes for its clients; Parallel’s fee only becomes payable once the client starts seeing results.
Parallel Purchasing started last year and is the brainchild of MD Matthew Armitage (pictured, above). Armitage has spent his entire career in the food trade and possesses an extremely strong track record in the procurement of ingredients, packaging, and services for bakeries.
Matthew Armitage says: “By Cybake and Parallel working together, we can have a tremendous impact on any bakery business due to the combination of our systems and purchasing expertise.”
Transparency and integrity
Commenting on the new partnership, Jane Tyler, managing director of Cybake, says: “In a side of the baking sector that can sometimes seem filled with smoke and mirrors, we like Parallel Purchasing’s commitment to transparency and integrity. Trust is a big issue, especially in the food ingredients supply chain, and we believe Parallel provides commercial bakers with a win-win approach.”
Parallel Purchasing’s Matthew Armitage adds: “Both our companies like to emphasise that, although this might sound slightly counter-intuitive, an extra pound in sales is worth much less than a pound saved. Of course, gaining additional sales is always the priority, but once ingredients, energy and labour costs are considered, an extra pound in sales is unlikely to add more than 20p to your bottom line.
“In contrast, all of each pound saved goes directly on your bottom line – and yet purchasing in many cases is not given sufficient attention by bakeries.”
Armitage says that the benefits of using Cybake include guaranteeing that the business is paying the correct prices agreed with their supplier and ensuring it is claiming credits for short delivered or damaged stock. Similarly, as around five per cent of supplier invoices require some form of credit, Cybake makes sure any discrepancies are flagged up, so the baker is getting other credits they are due.
Other benefits include: keeping ingredient cost prices, and hence margins, in bakers’ recipes up to date, always using the last price paid to their suppliers; integration with accountancy software (Sage, QuickBooks, Xero etc) to avoid the need for double entry of purchase invoices; and the maintenance of an ingredient-cost price history to allow bakeries to work out the effect of cost price changes on margins over time.
Seamus Quinn is the head of communications for Cybake, Cybake USA and Cybake Australia.
