Balkan Services has successfully implemented SOFTONE ERP in eight companies of Boni Holding Group.
Boni Holding AD is one of the largest companies in the Bulgarian food industry and a leader in pork and sausage production. The company has hybrid and commodity pig farms and one of the most modern meat processing complexes in Europe.
To control its business, the holding relies on digitalising its processes. The latest project in this direction implemented at Boni Holding is implementing the SOFTONE ERP business management system. It was preceded by the implementation of Lucanet financial management software, which is used to prepare consolidated financial statements and Qlik's business analytics solution. The Balkan Services team has successfully implemented all these projects while providing comprehensive IT support to the holding company. The development of the new BI system of Boni Holding is underway, and it is expected to give a comprehensive picture of the company's business.
Prior to implementing the cloud version of SOFTONE ERP, Boni Holding had been using a business management system for many years.
Naturally, the growth of the business and the evolving needs led Boni Holding to look for a new technological solution. The good relationship built over the years, based on professionalism and mutual trust, directed the holding's choice to Balkan Services and the SOFTONE ERP solution.
Closed loop production
Within the companies that are part of Boni Holding, there is a process that is related to pig breeding, sausage production and the production of feed for the meat animals. The new ERP software has been implemented in two of the business areas - pig production and feed production.
The holding's production is not only related to pig numbers, but to the creation of increment - a very abstract concept that the Balkan Services team took into account when building the ERP system.
The project is one of the largest and most complex projects Balkan Services has implemented to date. After thorough preparation, SOFTONE ERP has been implemented in parallel in eight different companies of Boni Holding and is, in practice, management of a program of projects - each with its own specifics, deadline and work groups.
Key points of the project
The project started with a business analysis to identify the needs to be covered by the ERP system.
At the start of the project, all processes were revised. A specific and sophisticated ERP architecture was developed, with input from experts in all Balkan Services software areas. Next, the software was implemented in the individual companies, and the client's feedback was adapted to the solution.
Upgrading and further refinement of the processes is carried out step by step and together with Boni Holding to best meet their needs and expectations, and training of the ERP platform users is carried out in stages.
Effects of SOFTONE ERP implementation
The business management system facilitates day-to-day activities and helps the holding's employees work more comfortably and faster.
The new ERP software allows Boni Holding's management to see and evaluate in depth the costs and individual cost elements of products.
Through the business management software, not only the value indicators but also the in-kind indicators that reflect the results of the work of the teams directly involved with the animals can be evaluated. In this way, company management can analyse how a team performs and improve efficiency.
The project has achieved automatic interconnectivity between the pig farms, allowing the tracking of indicators throughout the animals' lifecycle, the analysis of the accumulated costs of rearing as the animals move from one pig farm to another, and the production of the necessary documents.
The ERP solution also significantly facilitates Boni Holding's operational activities related to monthly closures. Thanks to a Balkan Services development, they now happen almost instantly—with just a few clicks, whereas before, it took several days. A number of automated checks are in place, freeing up the chief accountants' time for analysis and control.
Through the various software solutions in the holding company, every single process has been automated, and integration has been done wherever it is needed. With SOFTONE ERP, the need for additional accounting software is eliminated, and manual data entry is as easy as possible.
The project has unified and standardised the working methods across the eight companies. Rules and principles have been established and will continue to be developed in other companies. The Group also reports additional positives from the project. The communication during the ERP system implementation brought the teams in the individual companies together and made them an even more cooperative team.
Three factors proved key to the project's success: management's support, management's vision of what it wanted to achieve, and getting it down to the holding company's employees.
