How ERP software is revolutionising pig farming at Boni Holding

The market is a dynamic environment in which profit cannot always serve as a benchmark for whether or not a production is running efficiently.

Thanks to a new ERP software, Boni Holding plc reports not only the value indicators of its business but also the natural ones. In the following lines, we will tell you more about one of the most complex projects implemented so far by the Balkan Services team.

“Boni Holding AD is one of the largest companies in the Bulgarian food industry and is a leader in pork production. For its thirty-year history, the company has ranked among Bulgaria’s most established producers of meat products and sausages. The company includes hybrid and commodity pig farms, as well as one of the most modern meat processing complexes in Europe, which has the technological capabilities to produce an unlimited range of meat products.

Boni Holding relies on the latest-generation digital solutions to control a business of this scale. This is exemplified by the latest project implemented by the Balkan Services team to implement the cloud version of the SOFTONE ERP system in 8 companies of the Boni Holding Group within just two years. This project was preceded by the implementation of Lucanet financial management software, which is used to prepare consolidated financial statements and Qlik business analytics software. The Balkan Services team has successfully implemented these projects while providing comprehensive IT support to Boni Holding. Our team is also currently working on a new BI system for the holding.

The need for a new ERP system

Over the years, Boni Holding has relied on a suitable software solution for its development. Тhe growth of the business and the evolving needs led Boni Holding to look for a new technological solution.

Hristo Stoyanov, Boni Holding’s CFO said that the very good relationship between Boni Holding and Balkan Services built on professionalism and trust, led them to choose our consulting company and the SOFTONE ERP solution.

This partnership is based on mutual trust, built with many projects and dating back many years,” emphasized Hristo Kostadinov, project manager from Balkan Services

Read more: Everything you need to know about ERP systems

Specifics of Boni Holding’s business

What is unique about Boni Holding’s business is that it has a closed loop of production. Within the Group, there is a process linked to pig breeding, sausage production, and, very importantly, feed production. This means that the company obtains the raw materials for the meat products it produces entirely from its own production.

All processes were revised at the start of the project. This allowed a new uniform standard of operation to be established for the entire pig production, which was the basis for the architecture of the new ERP system.

We had to build a new system from scratch with their current processes that are carried out in the individual pig farms, covering two of the important areas in their business – animal feed production (feed production) and pig production,” explained Hristo Kostadinov.

It is important to note that building an ERP system for pig production is very different from building one for any other output. Pig production is unlike any other because this process does not just produce pig numbers; it creates increments. This is a very abstract concept that the Balkan Services team dealt with when building the ERP system.

Business analysis and implementation of SOFTONE ERP

The project started with a business analysis, site visits and discussions with representatives of Boni Holding. This way, our team was able to find out what the client’s needs were and what was important for them to be covered by the ERP system.

It is important to mention here that we provide two types of business analysis to clients. The first, as in the case of Boni Holding, is related to a specific implementation and solution, while the second outlines all the necessary processes and describes the company’s needs without a subsequent product evaluation.

The project for Boni Holding involved a specific and complex implementation that required extensive preparation before the actual implementation.

Read more:
How Boni Holding AD reduced the time for financial consolidation by 92% [case study]

The Balkan Services team had to create a specific architecture for this project because how processes are implemented in a pig farm is critical.

Developing the right ERP architecture concept was critical to the project’s success, and architects from all Balkan Services software areas contributed to this initial phase.

In the beginning, this was a very complex task that involved experts from different departments of our company,” explained Hristo Kostadinov.

After discussing best practices and possible approaches, Alexander Nikolov, the lead architect in our SOFTONE team, took over the design and development of the solution used today across the eight companies.

Once the architecture was finalized, the implementation phase began in the individual companies. This phase involved presenting various ERP modules to the client, gathering feedback and adapting the system accordingly.

The system was upgraded step by step only when the process was secured, accepted and agreed with the client. It was essential to go at their pace and not for us to impose stressful deadlines.
We built on and refined processes with the client, allowed them time to consider their needs and then proposed a solution that best matched their needs. We didn’t move forward until users recognized their expectations in the new system,” Antoaneta Zaikova, Managing ERP Consultant in the Balkan Services team, told us about the process.

The training of the users—the employees of Boni Holding—was carried out in stages to avoid unnecessary stress.

The people who were trained at the first stage became the so-called ‘superusers’ of the system, then helped their colleagues and contributed immensely to change management,” explained Hristo Kostadinov.

Read more: Vitagrain monitors real-time the grain in its bases with an updated ERP system [case study]

The new ERP system brought the Boni Holding team even closer together

The system itself allows each user to work with it very easily, which brings pleasure to the daily activities,” the CFO of Boni Holding told SOFTONE ERP.

The ability to carry out ongoing work without significant effort allows processes to happen very quickly.

We need to detail the costs and costing of the products we produce,” Hristo Stoyanov further emphasized.

He added that the new ERP software allows Boni Holding to see in-depth the individual cost elements and their weight, respectively, to make decisions on their adjustment if needed.

The system enables us to see if our production itself is working well. In addition to the value indicators – profit and money in all their forms – we also consider the natural indicators, reflecting the result of the work of the teams that work directly with the animals. From there, we can conclude whether a team has done its job well,” illustrates the benefits of the new ERP system, Bonnie Holding’s CFO.

“We can see that despite our excellent results, we can further improve the way we work and the conditions we have in place to have even better efficiency,” he added.

With the new ERP system, automatic connectivity between pig farms has been achieved, making it easier to produce documents and ensuring full traceability of movements. This allows feed production plans to be made directly through the system, orders to be dispatched, and their execution to be tracked by date.

This connectivity has made it possible to track performance throughout the life cycle of pig rearing, as well as to analyse the accumulation of rearing costs as pigs move from one piggery to another,” commented Antoaneta Zaikova from our team on what has been achieved, adding that many checks were built into the algorithms during development to assist users in the processes:
“The ERP software provides an easy way to diagnose and check on different logics that help accountants to be calm and have full control over accounting information. This approach has freed up the chief accountants’ time from operational activities and given them more time for analysis and control.”

One more thing that SOFTONE ERP has significantly eased the operational activities of Boni Holding is the monthly closings, which are a very busy part of the accountants’ work. Thanks to a development by our team, they now happen very quickly – with just a few clicks, in other words – a few days faster than before.

Read more: Viplast AD optimizes its production with Soft1 ERP cloud software [case study]

We work as a Group and the timely submission of the financial statements enables us to prepare the consolidated financial statements very quickly, for which we also use software from Balkan Services. We prepare consolidated accounts monthly and can prepare the consolidated financial statements when other companies could have prepared their individual accounts. I think that is a huge achievement. Years ago, the consolidated financial statement was prepared in Excel, which did not allow many people to work simultaneously. It used to take at least a week for a very good specialist. Now, with the current way of working with Lucanet, it is incomparable, and the preparation of the report happens in hours,” the CFO of Boni Holding emphasized the benefits of automating processes with different software systems.

It is important to note that every single process in the company has been automated, and integration has been done wherever necessary to alleviate manual data entry as much as possible.

For example, if today there is a delivery of raw materials for feed production and a truck is waiting at the plant entrance – right there, the ERP system is integrated with the scale and records its readings in real-time. Thus, what the person who receives the truck does is directly reflected in SOFTONE ERP and the necessary documents are quickly prepared without the need for additional weighing software and data transfer,” explained Hristo Kostadinov from our team.

The holding also reports one additional plus from the project.

The problems of building the project helped people to talk more to each other – it brought the teams in the individual companies together, and now they are calmly exchanging information and helping each other. So these proven good specialists have become an even better team that looks in one direction, which is very important for a company,” said Hristo Stoyanov.

Read more: How FF Group increased online sales 7 times and fulfilled orders 5 times faster [case study]

Not one project, but eight in one

From the point of view of the Boni Holding team, the biggest challenge around the project turned out to be building employee trust in the new software.

We managed to overcome this moment, and each of the colleagues in these eight companies went from distrust to an extremely positive attitude towards the software and worked with it for a period of between one and two months,” said Hristo Stoyanov.

It is important to note that the companies’ activities are identical at first glance, but this can be misleading. When you get into the details, you can see that many nuances need to be tailored and built into the model to make it work the same for all companies in the Group.

This has led to an extra effort to build a model that, despite the differences, can work for all companies. To unify and standardise the way they work and to create rules and principles that are much easier to build on and continue to be developed in other of the companies,” added the CFO of Boni Holding.

For Antoaneta Zaikova from our team, the key achievement in implementing a single system for the whole pig industry to work with was the standardisation of process management and data extraction:

They are reported in the same way, which allows data to be analysed not only pig by a pig, but also in aggregate.”

Another aspect of the approach is that there are companies that cover the whole life cycle of pig production. Still, there are also those whose activity is only related to the beginning of the life cycle.

It was a huge challenge for us to ensure traceability of all the indicators that are important for the optimal rearing of pigs when they are transferred from one company to another, regardless of how many pig farms an animal will pass through,” said Hristo Kostadinov.

Another challenge is the parallel implementation of the ERP software in the different companies, which involves working at different project management stages in eight companies.

In fact, we were not implementing a project but managing a programme of projects, each with its specifics, deadlines and work teams. As a result, we provided software fully tailored to Bonnie Holding’s needs so that everyone could do their job easily and quickly.” Throughout the project, we relied on their outstanding support and assistance,” said Hristo Kostadinov.

Success factors

Such a large and complex project is impossible to start, develop and be successfully completed without the support of the management.

Boni Holding’s management understood very well the need for modern software that would enable them to use the information they had to analyse and make the right decisions. This gave a powerful message to the users in the pig farming companies that this was the right direction,” said Hristo Kostadinov from our team. He added: “Two of the factors that we have seen in many of our projects to be key to their success are the support of management and the clarity of management about what they want to achieve. The third factor we can highlight is getting it all right down to the employees.”

Boni Holding added that the Balkan Services team had demonstrated great professionalism and knowledge, had managed to get into the specific business processes of pig and feed production in a short time and the teams’ collaboration was at a very good level.

The most important thing for the success of a software implementation is not the software itself. Success is about listening to the customer, understanding their needs and offering a solution to their problem, not just covering features”, says Antoaneta Zaikova from our team, adding that “In the implementation process, you have to work with people, give them peace of mind that they are not alone, that they can count on us at any moment”.

In conclusion, Hristo Kostadinov summarized that “The implementation of SOFTONE ERP at Boni Holding is a very large-scale project, incomparable to any other.”

For his part, Hristo Stoyanov called the eight parallel implementations in such a short time – heroic.

The project is large and complex – even for just one company, it is very large. What we tried to do turned out very well and is now a fact, as the ERP system is successfully working in all eight companies of Boni Holding related to pig breeding”.

Vision for development

As the potential of the ERP system was realised, further upgrades followed, which optimised processes even further. Another joint project was also launched—the development of a new BI system based on the Qlik Sense business analytics solution. On the one hand, this will provide Boni Holding with a very broad picture of the business and, on the other, an in-depth insight combined with speed and timely information.

The world is so dynamic right now that timely and accurate information enables quick and correct decisions. When ERP and BI solutions are combined, a very good model will emerge. The analysis will be much easier and more timely. We count on having accurate information, and it will be on time,” says Hristo Stoyanov from Boni Holding about his expectations and adds about their vision for development:
“We want the company to evolve because if it stays in one position, it simply ceases to exist. The market in Bulgaria, the area in which the company operates, has a huge potential. For us, there is no end goal; we will do everything we can to continue to develop the company.”

At Balkan Services we have expert knowledge of business, technology, and legislation, and we speak all three languages. We will listen carefully and advise you on choosing the right business system for your needs.

Balkan Services has been implementing business software solutions since 2006 and has completed more than 720 projects for over 390 clients. We follow a proven implementation methodology with clear steps and best practice know-how.