mrc Teams Up With Renzi Foodservice to Extend Their ERP

December 2014 · Oak Brook, IL

Software development company michaels, ross & cole, ltd. (mrc) and foodservice distributor Renzi Foodservice recently teamed up to extend Renzi's legacy ERP system with mobile apps, better reporting, True Profit Analysis capabilities, and more. Renzi Foodservice is a foodservice distributor serving parts of New York and Vermont. mrc is a global software development and consulting company specializing in web application development software.

Facing an expensive ERP upgrade, Renzi Foodservice chose to explore its alternatives. The company began searching for ways to:

• Extend their current ERP system with new features: Renzi needed to add custom features, like mobile capabilities, portals, and budgeting, to its existing ERP system.
• Deliver better reporting: Renzi wanted to move away from a time-consuming, Excel-based reporting process, and needed a way to deliver reports and pivot tables via the web.
• Connect data from multiple systems: With data living across multiple systems, measuring true profitability and creating budgets was a challenge. Renzi needed to connect data from disparate systems into a single location.

To address these needs, Renzi teamed up with software developer mrc. In a joint webinar, Renzi explained how mrc's development platform, m-Power, helped them:

Deliver real-time data access to employees

Renzi created a company-wide, secure portal that ties into their ERP system, giving employees a centralized location to access inventory, reports, budgets, and more.

Improve their budgeting process and provide a complete view of financial data

With m-Power, Renzi created web-based budgeting applications that pull data from multiple sources, making it easy to build accurate budgets and measure the true profitability of products, routes, and customers.

Provide mobile access to their data and avoid a $75,000 module fee

Using m-Power, Renzi created a mobile version of their web portal. It lets salespeople access real-time inventory straight from their ERP and gives executives instant access to analytics. It also let them avoid the $75,000 cost of their ERP's mobile module.

Streamline reporting and give executives a clearer view of the business

With m-Power, Renzi delivered web-based BI and reporting applications that give executives real-time access to their ERP data at any time.

"We chose m-Power for its flexible Business Intelligence capabilities, but also realized that it offers a far more extensible platform compared with other, more specialized BI tools," says Paul Millard, Senior IT Manager at Renzi Foodservice. "With m-Power, we've consolidated our data into a secure web portal where each department can easily access the data and reports they require in seconds. We have used m-Power to extend the capabilities of our existing Retalix ERP database, avoiding modification costs and giving us more value for our investment."

###