Case study

Wasabi Sushi & Bento streamlines growth with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Highlights:

Wasabi updates its business ERP platform with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to deliver better efficiency into its business operations.

Connecting the business and gaining better visibility, Wasabi is equipped to drive its ambitious growth goals including expanding its restaurants and franchise opportunities.

Further advanced capabilities to strengthen controls and enhance traceability across Wasabi’s production process will be integrated into Business Central within the year.

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About the organisation

Wasabi is committed to serving up delicious Asian food using tasty, authentic ingredients. Its range of takeaway meals are available through over 40 dedicated stores and in all the major UK supermarkets including Tesco, Co-op, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Asda. Selecting and sustainably sourcing the freshest ingredients is key. As members of SEDEX, Wasabi actively works with its supply chain to enhance the transparency of its ingredients’ origins. The business is determined to reduce its impact on the environment, committing to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

The challenge

While Wasabi’s high-quality customer experience gained a large and loyal customer base, back-office employees have enormous amounts of information to manage to ensure continued customer satisfaction. As Wasabi has grown, managing day-to-day sales order information, inventory and financial ledger details on its highly customised, legacy system had become increasingly frustrating, error[1]prone and slow, often blocking users for up to an hour.

With its new POS and data warehouse system successfully rolled out to all its stores, Wasabi turned towards modernising its end-to-end business processes to provide more control, automation and traceability across its manufacturing and retail operations.

Solution

Looking to connect all sides of the business and gain better visibility into operations, Wasabi turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, choosing Microsoft Inner Circle partner Xpedition to manage the implementation.

With Business Central, Wasabi now has more insight and control over its end-to-end processes, from sales, finance and purchasing to inventory and stock control. Using the new system, it can operate more efficiency and has an enhanced day-to-day view of the business.

Integration production planning capabilities
Integral to the business is Wasabi’s dedicated production facility. Now optimised in Business Central, outputs including production orders, sales forecasts and inventory updates are all managed seamlessly within the system.

Further, more advanced capabilities to enhance controls and traceability across Wasabi’s manufacturing process are being introduced within the year. Goods in and out will be handled with barcode readers and EDI will remove the reliance on human interfacing. MRP (Materials Requirements Planning) will enhance production planning and automating QA will eliminate existing Excel manual-based processes around food related checks and balances, such as quality, temperature and cleanliness.

Working with Xpedition

Israel Mello, Systems Manager at Wasabi

Benefits

• Accelerating business growth
Wasabi has shifted its focus from IT troubleshooting to growth and innovation, with IT issues nearly eliminated. Resources are now directed to large-scale automation projects aimed at enhancing long term efficiency and scalability across the production facility and the business.

•  Optimised production planning
Wasabi is eliminating the need to rely on Excel for factory operations in favour of automated system-driven processes. This is reducing labour costs, human error and over- or under-production and purchasing issues.

• Streamlined operational control
By standardising operations and moving away from heavy customisation, Wasabi is less dependent on IT suppliers and individual employees for continuity. The business has greater control over its own processes, reducing reliance on external and internal dependencies.

•  Enhanced system efficiency
The new user-friendly system streamlines daily tasks, with Vita Mojo replacing the POS and Business Central replacing the legacy ERP. With improved processing speeds, transactions now post instantly, eliminating frustrating wait times and boosting accuracy.

• Futureproofing and scalability
Wasabi has a flexible foundation for future growth, with the ability to add advanced functionalities such as MRP, production planning, AI-driven forecasting and barcode scanning for inventory tracking. The system is designed to adapt to new technologies, ensuring long-term scalability and operational efficiency.

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