Cloud-based app for warehouses decreasing product input time by 1/3
Executive Summary
Challenge: FareShare didn’t want to purchase and customise an off-the-shelf solution, so they decided to have a product built by our team from scratch.
Approach: We created a scalable, bespoke solution for the sourcing and management of goods in and goods out of FareShare warehouses.
Services we used:
Table of Contents
About the client
FareShare is a UK-wide charity fighting hunger and food waste. They redistribute good food that would otherwise go to waste.
In 2019/2020 the number of charities that Farshare support increased to 10,962 and the number of people accessing the food each week rose to 933,178. The food we redistributed contributed towards 57.3 million meals and saved the charity sector £14.1 million.
FareShare is growing the amount of food they distribute year on year and have ambitious plans for the future, but their legacy system was making this growth difficult.
Business challenge
The specifics of FareShare’s operations meant that it made no sense for FareShare to purchase and customise an off-the-shelf solution and so they decided to have a product built by Future Processing from scratch.
£14,1 mln
estimated value of food to charities
24,074
tonnes of food redistributed to charities
Scope of work
Future Processing created a bespoke solution for the sourcing and management of goods in and goods out of FareShare warehouses.
The newly created cloud-based application has been designed specifically to save time and boost efficiency in the warehouses and support the management of the national redistribution network whilst maintaining control of food handling and traceability – something which is extremely important in a food-regulated business.
The new solution will help FareShare in the day-to-day operations of their warehouses and will reflect the way they operate, rather than require FareShare to adjust their ways of working to the system.
The project was managed on behalf of FareShare by Quantiv Limited, a UK-based software design consultancy.
One of the things we have valued about working with Future Processing is that we got the cost benefits of working with a nearshore provider, but we also had the benefits of a well-established team. You came in with known set technologies, you knew what you were doing, knew how your processes worked, how your management worked and how to run an agile process. This all meant we hit the ground running.
Watch the interview
Richard Huxtable, Rachel Ledwith and Steve Baker explain how nearshoring became the chosen alternative and what benefits working with Future Processing brings to the company.
Main benefits of our partnership
The new application is much more user friendly, more intuitive and quicker to use than the legacy application. This means no long training is required which is crucial to the overall efficiency of the warehouses since new workers and volunteers join the charity regularly.
Great attention has been paid to the user experience and speed of data entry, for example, extensive use of UI features such as autocomplete fields help decrease product input time on key processes by up to 1/3 when compared to the old system.
The system is scalable thanks to the use of Amazon Web Services – a cloud-based platform providing on-demand computing and storage and includes complete analytics and reporting solution
The collaboration between us Fareshare and Future Processing really, really helps us to get more of surplus food that’s available in the UK out to more people, who need it on a daily basis, so we couldn’t be more delighted to have the solution, coming to us very soon.
Technologies used in the project
