Food distributor cuts costs and downtime with Oracle
Puerto Rico-based food-distribution company deploys Oracle Database Appliance and achieves 99.9% hardware availability.
“We can always trust that Oracle Database Appliance won’t fail us. It has been running uninterrupted since 2018.”
Business challenges
Hill Brothers helps feed Puerto Rico.
Cecilio Massanet, nicknamed “El Gallo,” or The Rooster, launched the company in 1962 with $700. He started at 4 a.m. and put in 18 hours of work every day.
Now, the company distributes fruits, vegetables, juices, salt, olive oil, jam, and other food across Puerto Rico, to more than 500 businesses, including supermarkets, hotels, and restaurants. The company also has a consumer brand, Al Fresco. Nearly 90% of Hill Brothers products are imported globally, including from the continental US, elsewhere in Latin America, and Asia. Additionally, Hill Brothers ships products from fast-food chains to retail outlets.
The business’s high transaction and data volume requires robust database software and hardware to keep inventories and customer transactions up to date. Previous hardware suffered monthly system crashes, requiring manual billing at a cost of up to $30,000 per month.
Thanks to Oracle Database Appliance I can sleep easier knowing that I won’t receive a call at three in the morning about a crashed system, or an invoice that can’t be printed, or an order that can’t be dispatched.
Why Hill Brothers Chose Oracle
Hill Brothers has used JD Edwards ERP for more than 12 years, and decided to use Oracle hardware for a complete solution, choosing to deploy Oracle Database Appliance.
ODA provided the greatest stability, robustness, and best performance, with connectivity to third-party platforms.
Results
The integrated Oracle Database Appliance eliminated crashes and saved the cost of manual billing; the hardware has been running nonstop since 2018, reaching availability of 99.7%. These improvements have brought operating savings of $60,000 annually.
The Oracle platform runs purchases, sales, inventory, accounts receivable, and payable.
Hill Brothers sees significant performance improvements by running JD Edwards EnterpriseOne using in-memory from Oracle Database integrated with Oracle Database Appliance. For example, printing a purchase order takes only 3 seconds now, but it used to take 15 seconds on non-Oracle hardware. Those seconds are important, given the company’s transaction volume. Responsiveness for remote users is equivalent to users connecting from within the office.
Improved performance gives users real-time information, to improve decision-making. The platform’s robustness and efficiency gives users confidence in the system’s reliability.
Partners
Hill Brothers partnered with ERP Consulting Group, which provides JD Edwards specialization. ERP Consulting Group reduced the cost of implementation, and provided bilingual support for both Spanish and English.