Agra Trading was incorporated in 1975 and is the trading arm of Kepak Group, one of Europe’s leading food businesses. Originally involved in the production and trading of beef, they have expanded their product range over the years to include lamb, pork, poultry, seafood, processed goods, fruit and vegetables, and food ingredients. Agra is a market leader in the Irish, European and South American food industry, with a strong presence throughout the world.
Agra needed strong retail accounting software, order processing and inventory management solution for new joint venture operations in Africa. They had no local IT support to implement or manage an “on premise” solution and needed to provide simultaneous access to both the local operation and Head Office. Food products (meat & fish) are imported in consignments and sold locally. Key requirements were the ability to “roll up” shipping and landing costs into overall stock item cost and dynamically manage sales pricing. The ability to report on revenues and margins by product, product group and customer as well as the profitability of each consignment was also important.
Key Challenges
- Single system with online access for teams in Ireland & Africa 24/7
- Simply monthly fee with no upfront capital cost on local servers etc
- Strong sales and profitability Reporting – no need to export to Excel or re-key anything.
- Extensive functionality meeting their requirement but with a system than can grow with the company.
The Solution
Agra Trading chose to adopt AccountsIQ retail accounting software for all its financial requirements consisting of:
- Full multi-currency processing
- Inventory Management including ability to roll up landing/shipping costs
- Tight control over sales pricing with ability to change to suit market dynamically
- Local Withholding tax requirements
- Consignment Profitability Reporting
Results
Having setup a new operation in Africa, we needed to implement a solution quickly to start trading. We initially looked at buying an on-premise retail accounting package and the required servers and infrastructure but had little access to local IT support. Luckily AccountsIQ was recommended to us and we were able to implement a full solution within 4 weeks at a fraction of the cost of installing an on-premise solution.
Kevin Ruane, CFO Agra Trading
Agra now has a turnkey solution that is accessible worldwide and it was implemented within 4 weeks with no up-front capital expenditure on hardware, comms or software.
We trade all over the world and in this case needed a solution that was available to the local operation but was also accessible by us remotely. AccountsIQ provides us with a solution that is simultaneously accessible to everyone without us having to worry about the IT infrastructure to achieve this. It allows us to closely monitor profitability of the operation and participate in operational decisions on pricing etc when required. We are delighted with the solution and particularly the financial reporting capability and have found the support to be excellent.
Kevin Ruane, CFO Agra Trading