Streamlining complex global supply chain data

Having already successfully implemented the Muddy Boots Greenlight Quality Management solution in 2014, Worldwide Fruit identified a business need for a solution that could monitor their large, complex global supply base, in a user-friendly format.

Who are Worldwide Fruit?

As their name implies, Worldwide Fruit are an international fruit marketing and distribution company. Established in 2000, they source products globally, from over 1000 growers with supply 365 days of the year to some of the UK’s leading supermarkets. Product Is sourced from top-quality suppliers in the UK, New Zealand, South America, South Africa, USA, and Europe.

Why Greenlight Supplier Management?

Worldwide Fruit monitors multiple variables with a large number of data sets and could easily be dealing with 15 different associated documents on one email. Before implementing Greenlight Supplier Management (GLSM) this process was very manual, with a risk of email attachments getting lost.  Willie Wood, Head of Technical at Worldwide Fruit explains ‘not only is this time consuming, it is also not an efficient process when we have multiple internal customers needing access to that information.’ 

All our data needs to be checked, verified, and approved before final sign-off. It was important for us to have an efficient method of handling large numbers of detailed data sets,  a systemised process was crucial for making it workable.’

As GLSM is a cloud-based platform users can access from anywhere in the world, ensuring that everyone has the most up-to-date information at their fingertips, facilitating easy collaboration within the supply chain.

Implementing Greenlight Supplier Management

The stringent safety regulations of a globalised supply chain and an increasingly discerning consumer means that food businesses need complete confidence and transparency in their supply network. Worldwide Fruits’ company mission is to be their “Customers First Choice”, in order to achieve this enhancing compliance and benchmarking performance is key to driving continuous improvement.

As the company has grown, so has the burden of data. Since implementing GLSM  Worldwide Fruit are now close to 100% automated documentation, this has allowed increased capacity within existing teams to do other tasks and functions, without having to invest in a greater headcount as the company has grown.

‘The only way that you can manage an increased data burden is by systemising and automating processes’ Willie Wood.

Increasing engagement with suppliers

Reducing the administrative burden on internal teams is a priority for many companies, GLSM allows you to invite your suppliers into the system to upload and manage their own due diligence in line with your requirements. Whilst system-generated alerts and embedded validation rules drive timely business decisions.

‘We have seen the biggest difference in the capacity it has created within the team, allowing us to not just approve suppliers in the process but spend more time on our monthly quality meetings, which is where we review supplier performance. We can now have greater engagement and build improved dialogues which feed into our end-of-season reviews of supplier scorecards.

Our use of GLSM has grown and changed over the years, enabling our compliance team to become more integrated within the broader supplier management and development agenda.’

Looking to the future

‘GLSM continues to allow us to make those quick efficient decisions. Accuracy is key and the repetitive nature of looking at a large number of data sets means that you can get “data blind” very easily, leading to inaccuracies. Having a structured system has helped with error proofing, we are making fewer errors because of that systematic flow of data and information, highlighting blind spots we may have not known we had.

GLSM has also enabled us to have one platform that can perform supplier approval as well as interface with our arrivals point, ensuring that the goods that are coming in are assessed against that approval status. We supply a range of retailers and the approval level can vary between them.’