Global food company, Prolife Foods, which works with Australia’s leading supermarkets, has shifted its paper-based stocktaking system to a fully automated digital platform in just over two months.

Previously, processes such as stocktake were completed using a paper-based method, which was slow and meant count sheets became obsolete regularly as product ranges changed.

The merchandise team was also reliant on supermarket ordering scanners to place stock orders, which created access issues to scanners as well as not giving Prolife Foods the ability to create a system-driven receipt process for inward goods. 

Prolife Foods decided to partner with technology consultancy, Slalom to develop a Microsoft Power Platform app for merchandisers to reduce the time spent on administrative tasks. 

As Prolife Foods already had an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Slalom used tools that were already integrated with their system to provide a custom app, meaning Prolife didn’t need to adapt to new technologies and consequently, invest in retraining staff.

The app has enabled the business to be more efficient in tracking stock, with a 70% decrease in time for merchandisers to submit stock orders as Prolife is no longer as reliant on the supermarket infrastructure. It has also led to a significant reduction in waste.  

According to a recent global study by Statista, more than half (56%) of businesses ranked digital transformation as their top technical initiative in 2020 and 2021.