British Pepper and Spice (BP&S) - one of Britain's oldest companies, founded in 1666, and the UK's largest manufacturer and supplier of retailer branded herbs and spices - has carried out a business improvement programme for its processes and procurement with the help of enterprise consultancy Fast Track.

BP&S has "one of the most modern and efficient processing plants in the country", according to the Northampton-based company, which has around 30 IT users. Following a management buyout in 1998 BP&S installed an SAP R/3 enterprise system and is now building on that foundation. In line with BP&S' continuous improvement policy for information management, cost efficiency, sales and operations planning and other areas, Fast Track has made specific process improvements to customer and product productivity and profitability, and to quality control, upgrading BP&S from SAP R/3 3.1H to version 4.6C. The upgrade went live in July 2001 - on time and to budget.

SAP components implemented for BP&S by Fast Track are Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Materials Management, Production Planning, Sales & Distribution - including foreign trade and Euro trading - and Inventory Management. Implementation and development also includes Quality Management, Sales & Operations Planning, and Profitability Analysis.

A further area of development will be to make BP&S' e-business enabled for the future, with 'anytime, anywhere' Web-based access, plus the provision of transaction processes over the Internet.

"Being able to integrate our data and processes in this latest environment will streamline the business", says BP&S financial director Andrew Hetzel. "We will have also have faster access to better information - all of which supports our strategy for continuous improvement".

Case Study by Fast Track