Josalyn Price, Head of Commercial and Operations for Cybake Bakery Software in Australia and New Zealand tells us about the versatility of their baking business software and how it can help you successfully run all aspects of your business.
Every wholesale bakery in Australia that uses Cybake software to manage their operations also uses it to take online orders.
The reasons for this are partly historical. Cybake baking business software has only been available in Australia for just over two years. In today’s world of e-commerce, more recent users of our baking business software rightfully expect online order-taking as standard, as do their own customers.
There are a number of software apps that bakers in Australia can choose from to take their online orders. Some even allow for the lead times, cut-offs, and standing orders that bakeries require, along with payment and delivery options.
What these systems don’t do, however, is automatically schedule those orders into production; calculate their mixes; generate their prep sheets (allowing for tray sizes); or provide the allergen and nutritional information that’s needed to fulfil them.
Cybake baking business software does all of this as well as taking orders, issuing invoices, and managing deliveries. Plus, it keeps track of the bread crates/baskets that orders are delivered in, all without the need for much human oversight.
Cybake users check to see that there aren’t any wild discrepancies in the orders that are going through their system, but that’s pretty much it. The rest is automated and it’s all in the cloud, so they can log in to check on progress whenever and wherever they want.
In contrast, wholesale bakers that use less specialised online ordering apps may still be daunted by the prospect of taking on new business. Yes, they have a system that can receive orders, but when it comes to actually processing them, they still have big admin overheads.
On top of that, the unenviable task of manually transferring online orders and reinputting them for production purposes, will inevitably lead to errors.
The advantages of linking orders straight to production accurately are possibly best summed up by Cary Clifford of Camino Bakery in North Carolina, USA.
In a recent article on our website, she says: “Our customers now place their own orders and so it’s fantastic because we don’t have to do anything. They just do it online. If there’s a mistake, they made it and they’re not mad at us.”
The case for bakery-specific online ordering software that integrates with production is clear. But the options available to commercial bakers in Australia to achieve this level of integration is limited.
In our case, our local implementation team helps bakers to set up their Cybake systems both internally (to process production), and externally to populate the web pages that they want to show to their customers. Crucially, this also includes adding all their lead times and cut off points for orders.
Each of the bakery’s customers is given their own product list telling them what they have on standing order, what they have ordered before, and when they ordered it.
Our implementations team also customises our bakers’ ordering sites with their brands. Most bakeries then add links from their websites’ home pages to their Cybake order-taking sites, so that the ordering pages look like extensions of their own.
There is no doubt that allowing customers to order online will add serious momentum to any wholesale bakery’s growth. The question is how to handle that growth without the hassle. NBIA Members get 10% off the establishment fee so if Cybake baking business software sounds like it might be the answer for your bakery, please get in touch to book a demo via our website at cybake.com.