New purchasing BI reports give bakers the upper hand in negotiations with suppliers
We have added new business intelligence reporting screens to Cybake bakery software’s purchasing module which give our users a serious edge when dealing with suppliers.
The new business intelligence (BI) screens feature pie charts, bar charts and graphs that give Cybake users a clear, at-a-glance, picture of their purchasing activities and KPIs. This gives you the advantage when negotiating with suppliers, as the information you need to make a good deal is right in front of you, at your fingertips, at all times.
Cybake now displays an overview of a bakery business’s net purchasing spend by both supplier and ingredient. It also breaks down ingredient purchases and cost trends, with a view of the latest prices, the last time an ingredient was purchased, from which supplier, at what price, and in which format.
Plus, Cybake now features a service-level report which tells bakeries whether suppliers are fulfilling their orders, as well as purchase order analysis, within which the status and progress of all purchase orders can be queried.
Matt Armitage, the head of bakery consultancy Parallel Purchasing, an Independent Cybake Partner that specializes in this often-overlooked area of the baking business, says that using Cybake’s purchasing module provides a number of benefits.
He says: “Cybake ensures that you are paying the correct price agreed with your supplier and that you are claiming credits for short delivered or damaged stock – confirmed at goods inwards. In fact, the industry average is that 5% of supplier invoices require some form of credit. With Cybake, any discrepancies are flagged up, so that you are getting the credits due to you every time.”
Matt points to a number of other key advantages.
“Cloud-based access means there is always a clear picture of what has been spent, and what is on order, and that this can be seen by users in the warehouse, the bakery, the office and home office.”
“Also, Cybake maintains an ingredient-cost price history which allows you to work out the effect of cost price changes on margins over time. And it interfaces with accounts software like QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage to avoid the need to double enter purchase invoices, cutting unnecessary labor costs.”
We first announced the addition of business intelligence reporting screens to Cybake back in August 2020. These showed our users how their bakery was performing in terms of sales, profit, and retail stock, and proved very popular. Retail bakery replenishment, sales and waste BI functions followed.
With today’s announcement, a bakery’s purchasing can now be tracked, analyzed and represented in the same way, giving the upper hand to bakers every time when they are negotiating prices with their suppliers.
Here’s what you get:
1. Purchasing Overview – Good quality, live data pulled directly from the supplier orders and invoices that can be visualized by supplier, category, and product. The time periods and data shown can be amended dynamically on screen. Data can also be exported easily to other systems like Microsoft Excel to be shared or analysed further.
Having visibility of purchasing data in this way can be used for supplier negotiations, assessing the impacts of price increases or decreases by category, spend forecasting, and business margin analysis.
2. Purchase Order Analysis – This screen enables to quickly drill down to specific orders, deliveries, and supplier invoices. That means there is no more manually checking through supplier delivery notes and invoices, as all the data is stored securely online and can be filtered in seconds. You can quickly view orders that are awaiting delivery, the invoice from the supplier, or have a discrepancy and require a credit.
3. Purchase Invoice Analysis by Product and by Supplier – Quickly view historical spend data in more detail by product and supplier, detailing the quantity purchased, amount paid, and the average price paid. This data can be used for supplier negotiation and bench marking, as well as assessing the impact of supplier price increases and decreases, plus consumption analysis.
And:
4. Latest Price Overview – A summary of all supplier products displayed with the relevant information including the price, pack size, product code, and last purchased date. This enables you to view the available products and which has the best prices all in one convenient screen.
5. Service Level Report – Put simply, are suppliers fulfilling their orders? And how do your suppliers’ levels of service stack up against each other? A great decision-making and negotiating tool.
If you want to see how Cybake bakery software’s new purchasing BI reports can help your baking business, why not get a demo?
Jane Tyler is the managing director of Cybake and was the bakery software’s original creator. She is a regular speaker at food and technology conferences and is also known for championing the cause of food waste reduction.
