Organic Beef Producer Optimises Fulfilment Amid Supply Chain Challenges With NetSuite
Based in Australia, OBE Organic is a renowned exporter of premium organic beef. A group of cattlemen and women with a shared passion for sustainable and ethical beef production founded the company 25 years ago. Today, OBE Organic continues to take pride in providing high-quality, certified organic meat from cattle raised in the vast and remote rangelands of Australia, where animals graze freely without feedlots or concentrated farming practices.
COMPANY
OBE Organic
LOCATION
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
INDUSTRY
Food and Beverage
EMPLOYEES
Under 20
NUMBER OF COUNTRIES
16
NETSUITE MODULES DEPLOYED
IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER
LEARN HOW CLOUD ERP CAN STREAMLINE YOUR BUSINESS.
“With NetSuite, we have improved our inventory management and can react rapidly to rising freight costs and other supply chain issues. NetSuite informs critical decisions that reduce the impact of rising costs for the business and our customers.” David Orchard, General Manager of Commercial Operations, OBE Organic
Supply Chain Control Manages Increasing Production Costs
- Premium producer goes global
- Certified organic to both Australian and international standards, OBE Organic’s beef is free from synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers and raised using environmentally sustainable farming practices. The company has earned a reputation for excellence with customers around the world, supplying beef to high-end restaurants and wholesalers in 16 countries. The United States is its largest export market.
- Inventory management constraints
- OBE Organic started out with MYOB software and spreadsheets. As the company began shipping more product to more places, MYOB revealed limitations. For example, the software couldn’t manage inventory using two units of measure: pounds and kilograms. It was also challenging to accurately account for the weight of individual shipping cartons because MYOB assumed that every carton was a standard weight, but actual weights were variable or ‘catch weight.’ Meat exporters use catch weight extensively to manage inventory of variable weights. This affected the total weight calculations in sales orders, making it harder for OBE Organic to optimise each freight load—a significant issue considering freight represented a significant portion of goods sold (COGS).
- Data-driven distribution increases margin
- OBE Organic upgraded to NetSuite ERP more than 10 years ago. It has used the system to significantly improve inventory management and increase real-time visibility of production and logistics processes and costs. With full oversight of its supply chain, OBE Organic adapts swiftly to fluctuating inputs like freight costs and processing variability. For example, last year it ran an analysis of shipment weights and available air cargo space, then used NetSuite to consolidate shipments and adjust schedules accordingly.
- Efficient processes support move to D2C
- OBE Organic uses NetSuite to track the origin of each product down to the exact paddock the animal came from, which creates a powerful selling point for its premium brand. Improved traceability, coupled with other strong back-end systems and processes, gives leadership total confidence as it plans to add a D2C channel via a NetSuite integration with Shopify.
