Features Software
Gaia Herbs achieves 25% month-end efficiency savings with IFS Applications

Nov. 13, 2017 – Organic herbal supplement brand Gaia Herbs has announced it will implement IFS Applications for enterprise resource planning (ERP), saying it selected the software provider for its “expertise in the process manufacturing industry and ability to execute against key business efficiencies.”

Gaia will replace two disparate ERP systems, driving improvements including:

• A 25 per cent reduction in time spent on month-end and year-end financial reconciliation.
• A reduction of between 80 and 100 hours per week in manual work to populate data in the company’s MeetYourHerbs web portal, which provides customers visibility into the supply chain and product origins.
• Actual costing, which can be a challenge for some ERP systems because raw materials often go into an intermediate-stage liquid that is then used in several different products.
• Electronic records batch validation to streamline FDA compliance efforts.
• Sales and operations planning (S&OP) capabilities to balance productive capacity with impending demand.

Gaia says it values transparency of its supply chain because it gives customers confidence in the contents of the products they buy.

“It is important for us to ensure our customers can trace their end product all the way back to its source, including all of the related test results,” said Gaia technical project manager Jason Phillips. “We are delivering this service to our customers now through manual processes that will not easily scale as we continue to grow as a company. As we prepare for substantial growth, we need a more scalable, automated approach. IFS Applications will deliver this automation to us, and also enable us to add new data points to the MeetYourHerbs portal, like the name of the operator on a given manufacturing batch, and more. As we grow, rather than become distant from our customer, we want to use technology to pull our customers closer.”

“At IFS, we applaud Gaia’s efforts to not only meet regulatory requirements for traceability, but to exceed customer expectations for visibility into the origins and purity of their products. We are honoured to help them maintain this high-tech approach as they grow, and to help them drive leaner administrative processes and greater alignment between sales projections and production,” continued  Katherine James, IFS vice-president of sales for North America.