Founded in 2005, Natural Balance Foods is already establishing a strong franchise in the UK for its range of healthy cereal bars and flavour-infused raisin snacks in national grocery and healthfood chains. Today, its major Nakd and Trek brands can be found in the wholefoods and fast-expanding ‘free from’ sections of Tesco, Waitrose, Asda and Sainsbury’s, for example, as well as Boots, Holland & Barrett and independent specialist healthfood outlets.
Yet in successfully meeting this growing demand for healthier products, Natural Balance Foods has had to meet the challenge of managing rapid growth. “As a start-up we initially piggy-backed a custom-built ERP system built for a sister company operating in a very different Internet environment, together with spreadsheets and a financial accounting software solution,” says co-founder, Greg Combs.
However, this came under increasing strain as the business rapidly expanded and it became clear that the company needed an integrated solution which would manage the end-to-end process, from receipt of orders through to delivery and invoicing with minimum manual intervention. Additionally, the replacement system had to enable product full traceability and multiple warehouse inventory reporting..
“In selecting a Lakeview system, we recognised it had the essential flexibility and scalability to meet the current and future demands of our business and our customers,” he confirms. “This has proved without doubt to be the right decision, as we now have the perfect springboard for taking the business on to the next phase of its exciting growth.”