deliciously ella switches on Oracle NetSuite technology

Oracle NetSuite has announced a new partnership with plant-based food venture deliciously ella.

The latter’s founder and Brand Director, Ella Mills, started the company in 2011 after she fell ill with postural tachycardia syndrome, a condition affecting the autonomic nervous system.

Mills explored how plant-based foods could improve her health.

Nine years on her company boasts five best selling cookbooks, a lifestyle app, a central London Cafe and several ranges of food products in over 7,000 stores across the UK, with customers ranging from Tesco to Boots, Waitrose and Costa.

It was, however, finding that its accounting software was unable to natively consolidate financial statements from various markets with local currencies and was not able to provide accurate visibility into stock status.

It could also not be easily integrated with logistics partners or provide accurate forecasting.

Adding to the pressure was the fact that deliciously ella was fast approaching the size at which it would be required to undergo external audits.

"We needed to address being more international and be able to consolidate a wider business structure than we were able to," says Sally Tuhami, Finance Director, deliciously ella.

“Being audit ready is about having clear and documented controls and being able to demonstrate who's done what."

The brand decided to opt for Oracle NetSuite, selecting it ahead of Microsoft Dynamics and SAP.

“Although we are still really only at the beginning of our NetSuite journey, the benefits are already clear,” says Tuhami.

“Everything is in front of us and we no longer have a need for ‘Excel wizardry’ to gather the detail we need across the business.”

“Reporting is no longer a clunky, people dependent process. Most of all, being able to see our stock activity by customer, we've never had that ability before, is really fantastic as it allows us to plan and react accordingly.”

The finance team continues to refine its use of NetSuite and is planning to use the system to manage bank reconciliations.

Tuhami concludes: “It is going to grow with the business brilliantly. The bigger we get, the more we draw on NetSuite’s capabilities.”

Accounting softwareStaff Writerdeliciously ella, Oracle NetSuite, Accounting software, Retail technologyComment