CASE STUDY
Customer story Northern Greens
Northern Greens is a fruit, vegetable and plant-based products trader dealing with a wide range of fresh produce, liquid herbs, chilli pastes and plant-based proteins from a large supplier base, where compliance and audit-readiness are key to operations. Through Simvia they now automate supplier document management and stay on top of certifications like GLOBALG.A.P. CoC to save time and prepare for audits more efficiently.
Challenge
When Lysaris Escalante started at Northern Greens, she was initially overwhelmed by having to work directly with many suppliers and having to sort through many documents. While her company trades in fruit and vegetables, they also deal with liquid herbs, chilli pastes and plant-based extruded proteins. Because of these varied products, the number of suppliers they deal with is high, reaching at least 150.
Before Simvia
Having to manually write and send emails to obtain all the right documents was a daunting task, one that was aggravated by having to achieve the GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody(CoC)certification, which requires Quality Managers to be on top of these documents 24/7. While Northern Greens had a system in place to help with document management for suppliers, according to Lysaris the system required too much manual work, especially when preparing for their yearly audits. The main challenge here was to follow up with suppliers, considering that Lysaris’ only tool was flagging the emails in Outlook and then keeping an eye out to see if she had received an answer or not. The whole process ended up being very time-consuming and messy.
Solution
The company had been searching for a solution to simplify this process, when Frederic Unger from Simvia reached out to Lysaris, proposing Northern Greens make use of Simvia.
Simvia is a platform that ensures that compliance requirements are always met. This is possible through automated collection and management of supplier documents, as well as giving insights into the entire supply chain. Additionally, the collaboration with the GLOBALG.A.P and BRC databases safeguards users by keeping them up to date on potential risks in the supply chain.
One of the deciding factors for Northern Greens to switch to Simvia was the automated notifications to suppliers if one of their documents is about to expire, thus saving Lysaris the task of having to send many emails to collect the latest certificate.
Result
Mainly, our platform was going to help the company be ready for the CoC audit since it requires that all supplier certificates are checked for validity before each sales transaction. While this was initially done by checking each document individually, now Lysaris just has to wait and see if she receives a notification informing her of a suspended supplier certificate, otherwise, she can count on the certificates being valid. In the words of Lysaris: “This is a huge time saver and the auditor was happy with this way of working.”
Lysaris was very happy with the introduction to the platform, as well as the customer service experience. Whenever she’s had an issue she received help promptly, not only in the form of a reply but also by having her concern resolved as quickly as possible. For example, she required a certificate that was not available in the system and in under two hours her issue was resolved. Lysaris’ story ended on a positive note, with her saying: “Overall, I am very happy with the service you provide, both as a tool to comply with all needed requirements and for the service and support received.”
