Cheney Brothers

Cheney Brothers, Inc. (CBI) is a growing company based in Riviera Beach, Florida. Now in its fourth generation as a family owned and operated business, CBI continues to grow organically through both new product introductions and to a lesser extent strategic acquisitions.

Since 2000, CBI has achieved many momentous milestones, including opening a new janitorial division, expanding locations and distribution centers and reaching the $1 billion sales mark. Once a milk and egg distributor, CBI is now one of the largest food service distributors in the southern United States.

About the Project

In 2009, anticipating organic growth and with the prospect of two new company acquisitions, CBI saw the need to implement a scalable platform to allow for that continued growth. Even though customer chargebacks and vendor rebates were critical to growing profit, the process was becoming a complicated task.

As CBI’s chosen implementation partner, NTT DATA Business Solutions helped pinpoint the specific functions that needed to be addressed. In 2010, after the successful implementation of SAP Business Suite software, which was needed to align financial, human capital and operational processes, the next step was to implement a comprehensive SAP ERP platform to streamline complicated chargeback and rebate processes. Through demonstration with other wholesale and distribution (W&D) companies and specifically other food service providers, CBI knew that NTT DATA Business Solutions was the right partner to bring the company to its next level of growth.

NTT DATA Business Solutions worked closely with the CBI team to form an equal partnership that was critical through the implementation and overall success. A strong requirement of NTT DATA Business Solutions was to work within the existing company culture and listen to the needs of the teams to make sure goals were achieved and certain processes were appropriately executed. CBI still had working third-party relationships such as their laptop order entry software that needed to be seamlessly integrated from an SAP perspective. Working within the current culture of the organization, NTT DATA Business Solutions was able to align new and old processes to make a seamless transition to the new systems and leverage pre-built and tested environments for wholesale distribution.

The implementation took place over a three-year period from project start to go-live date. NTT DATA Business Solutions continues to provide strategic onsite and offsite support to ensure that CBI’s users were initially acclimated with the new processes and to support continued enhancements as business continues to grow.

The highly successful implementation provided CBI with an integrated and sustainable platform to confidently move forward into the company’s next chapter. As a result of the project, the company was able to see all logistical processes feeding financial integration into one platform. Business transactions now happen almost instantly and provide CBI with real-time data, improved reporting processes and the ability to continuously build upon their platform. CBI now has greater visibility into general processes such as vendor chargebacks and rebates which allows them to instantly track sales and revenue.