How Sai Gon Food Automated 95% Order Processing & cut operation time by 50%

Established 20+ years ago, Sai Gon Food has emerged as a prominent player in the culinary landscape of Vietnam. The country’s leading Watered Meal Manufacturer and Supplier has thrived over two decades, catering to both domestic and Japanese markets. In the Japanese market, they specialize in the export of frozen processed seafood products, while in Vietnam, they offer a diverse range of ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook meals, along with convenient fresh porridge products.

With 5 production factories, encompassing over 30,000 square meters and a dedicated workforce of 1500 employees, Sai Gon Food’s commitment to excellence has been the cornerstone of their success. But they required more when they decided to scale in e-commerce and use it as a distribution channel.

While online retail offered a faster and wider reach, the channel additionally enabled Sai Gon Food to easily adjust based on trends, market changes, and shopping behaviors. Expanding their e-commerce operations also enabled the business to explore omnichannel retail.

However, when approaching digital retail, Sai Gon Food realized that the process set up on their ERP software was not enough to support effective e-commerce processes. As a result, they experienced challenges that slowed down their business.

Challenges

Without a sales management solution, Sai Gon Food faced different hurdles while managing their e-commerce operations. Here are the top ones that impacted their revenue:

1. Fragmentated and manual cataloging

Sai Gon Food had a multi-channel sales operation team of nearly 10 employees focusing on uploading product information, prices, promotions, etc., across their multiple sales channels. A manual approach to this resulted in delays and mistakes.

They also struggled with virtual bundling due to the characteristics of e-commerce sales. They had to maintain many attractive bundles through their catalogs to engage more purchases. The management of these numerous bundles and constantly changing their details led to problems when syncing data for internal administration.

2. Inability to optimize delivery routes

As a large-scale manufacturer and retailer, Sai Gon Food has many warehouses, so choosing the storage site closest to the customer’s location was most important. Particularly for priority requests. Unfortunately, without an effective management system in place, optimizing a delivery route took time and the set routes were often inconvenient. That’s because inventory availability was difficult to ascertain and matching orders with the convenient fulfillment center took too much effort. This increased shipping costs and decreased customer satisfaction. The challenge often became worse during flash sales with the number of orders up to several thousand, and their manual work being completely inefficient.

3. Lack of real-time inventory data

Sai Gon Food often noticed that the actual inventory at their warehouse and the inventory data displayed on their sales channels did not match in real time, leading to order generation despite them being out of stock. This resulted in cancellations and greatly impacted customer experience with the brand.

Situations like these also added to the load on the backend as Sai Gon Food had to add an extra step in their operation when calling back or manually cancelling orders on any sales channels.

Implementation

As a commercial brand that cares deeply about customer experience, Sai Gon Food needed a solution that reflected this through consistency across all their sales platforms. The multinational supplier also expected the solution chosen to optimize human resources and integrate with existing tools, reduce operating costs, and focus on their goals.

While researching different options to support their e-commerce operations, Sai Gon Food came across Anchanto’s SaaS technology. Anchanto specializes in multi-channel operation management solutions, has experience working with big brands, global companies, and has an abundance of e-commerce knowledge.

The solutions provider also possesses solid implementation experience with approved processes and software which was a key factor for Sai Gon Food when choosing a partner.

Solutions

The adoption of innovative SaaS technology ushered in a new era of efficiency and streamlined processes across various critical aspects of Sai Gon Food’s e-commerce business. From automated and simplified processes to real-time updates and seamless integrations, Sai Gon Food witnessed a profound enhancement in their operational capabilities. Let’s explore each of the solutions they received in detail below:

1. Automated and simplified catalog management

After introducing Anchanto Order Management to their business, Sai Gon Food was able to centralize and automate listing their products across online sales channels – Lazada, Shopee, and Tiki. This enabled mass changes from a centralized platform, reducing errors and delays.

Through inventory centralization powered by Anchanto’s robust Order Management System, Sai Gon Food was also able to create a variety of virtual bundles and manage them with ease. Having automated this operation, the company was able to control their digital catalogs better. They even optimized personnel and reduced 50% of additional staff requirements.

2. Optimized delivery routes

Anchanto Order Management comes with inventory management capabilities, including delivery route optimization. With the help of this feature, Sai Gon Food was able to see their inventory across all warehouses and connect these with orders based on proximity to delivery locations. The process takes a few minutes and ensures only the warehouses in stock are connected with relevant orders. Through this optimization, Sai Gon Food has managed to improve their flexibility, cut fulfillment costs, and refocus personnel on more pressing tasks.

3. Real time inventory updates

After having all their inventory recorded on the Order Management System by Anchanto, live inventory data was available for review in one place, at any time. And every time an order was processed, the system updated every platform selling the brand’s products. With centralized auto-sync inventory, all online listings were updated based on inventory levels at the brand’s warehouses. The real-time inventory updates informed shoppers when stock wasn’t available thereby avoiding order cancellations and poor customer experiences.

Outcome

With the introduction of Anchanto’s Order Management System to their business, Sai Gon Food saw massive improvements. Two major improvements include:

1. Faster order processing

With the help of Anchanto Order Management, Sai Gon Food was able to automate 95% of all order processing. This enabled quick operation 24/7, reduced fulfillment time significantly, and cut down on costs resulting from errors. As fewer resources were required for this process their efficiency also increased.

2. Seamless platform and ERP integrations

Through ready integrations, Sai Gon Food easily connected with all of their digital sales channels for the quick communication of order information. Anchanto’s Order Management System also offered the manufacturer ERP integrations, enabling continued use of their existing systems to manage their inventory. This prevented setbacks to Sai Gon Food’s e-commerce operations and simplified their digital retail through a single platform.

Other notable outcomes after they started using Anchanto’s SaaS technology are:

• 24/7 real-time order processing
• Almost 100% order and return tracking to and from the warehouse
• Systematic order allocation to the nearest warehouse for speedy delivery
• 50% reduction in time spent on listing products online

Conclusion

Sai Gon Food appreciates the consistency achieved over their different e-commerce platforms with the help of comprehensive technology. E-commerce channels promise fast and sustainable growth in the coming years, so the manufacturer plans to enhance their application of Anchanto’s solutions.

For further improvement, Sai Gon Food wants Anchanto to consolidate performance insights from all their online sales channels and third-party sellers to get more than marketplace insights. For this, the company is considering Anchanto Digital Shelf analytics, a platform that provides AI-powered insights on a brand’s health and product performance.

In the future, Sai Gon Food is aiming to expand to the US and European markets. These are thorough markets, meaning they have a very high requirement for product quality, food safety, and hygiene indicators. With the help of Digital Shelf analytics, the company will be able to strategize better for these markets.