Vrugteboom, an international company for the import and export of fruit, has offices in Egypt, South Africa and the Netherlands. With a diverse, international team, a well-functioning, intuitive ERP system is a necessity. That's why they switched to Zest.
Vrugteboom already had an ERP system, but it was time to modernize. The fruit specialists wanted to work in the cloud. In addition, they were curious about the modern ERP systems that can be found on the market today. After a careful search, the decision finally fell on the relatively unknown Zest.
Zest may be a new name, but the people behind Zest are not new. Alexander Schrijvershof and Paul van der Linden are two old hands in the business. Both know the world of fruit import and export from the inside out. They understand how a good ERP system should work. And more importantly, they know exactly how a good ERP system should not work.
Turnkey system
Gerrit Klop, financial controller at Vrugteboom, does not regret his choice for Zest. “With Zest we have a turnkey system. Everything was already set up and we only had to add our own customers and suppliers, so to speak, and then we could get started. The experience of Schrijvershof and Van der Linden naturally plays an important role in this. Only if you know how things work in practice can you properly set up an ERP system for another company.”
Organizing and preparing everything properly is the first important step, but after that the employees have to get to work. Then it comes down to user-friendliness and Zest gets compliments from Klop in that area too. “A lot of people work at the three Vrugteboom offices (EG, NL and ZA) who are not that familiar with computers.”
“These are often commercial people and you should not bore them with all kinds of details or extensive training. So we didn't do that. We introduced everyone to Zest in an hour to get a feel for it and then we just started creating buy and sell orders live on January 1. And that worked.”
Fast implementation
Zest was successfully implemented in three months and the employees were able to start using it. Unprecedented for an industry in which implementation projects are feared due to the long duration of such projects. In addition to the fast implementation, Klop was also surprised by the flexibility of the system. “Normally ERP systems are very tightly designed and it is not possible to adjust it to your own liking. What is fixed is fixed. What they have done with Zest is ingenious. The only thing that is really fixed are my purchase and sales invoices, everything else I can still change along the way. Zest is multi-flexible, a rarity in the world of ERP systems.”
After this successful baptism of fire, Zest is ready to shake up the drowsy world of ERP systems. Not by completely turning everything upside down and doing it differently, but by combining years of practical experience with a system that knows how people like to work. Flexible, user-friendly, immediately well set up and, above all, with a very short implementation time.
For more information:
Alexander Schrijvershof
Zest B.V.
Email: alexander@zest-erp.com
https://zest-erp.com