Top Food Brand Relies on Super-fit Processes as Sales Surge

Charlie Bigham’s is a finely tuned business. Dishes have a fixed shelf life, leaving very little margin for error. As the business grew, it was essential that every process was documented via Liberty Spark, from the arrival of raw ingredients through to kitchen production, storage, picking, dispatch and invoicing.

Rather than information being held solely by subject matter experts, each department needed visibility of the end-to-end process. It opened up a level playing field. Today, Liberty Spark’s central, updateable maps spell out clearly to everyone how the business runs – from the top level, down into the detail.

This has proved essential for onboarding new joiners, identifying areas for improvement and providing the basis for strategic conversations about change. Teams now have the insight and confidence to talk about a business they fully understand – and where everyone is on the same page.

Liberty Spark is powering digital transformation. Mapping out processes has helped to identify every human touchpoint and where data is gathered. A wealth of opportunities for improvement came to light quickly.

For example, Spark made it clear that the weighing process for ingredients on the assembly line was inefficient. Now, smarter ways of working have been adopted – so ingredients only need weighing once, rather than multiple times.

Also, Spark helped them to identify that many processes across the operation involved manual paperwork. Now, staff use tablets to record and track events in real-time. This has also saved 35 hours each week of staff time on inputting paper records onto the system, equating to 262 working days each year.

Whenever improvements are suggested, it’s easier for managers to articulate the benefits clearly using Liberty Spark. And this makes it simpler to get buy-in and sign-off from stakeholders.

Charlie Bigham’s delivered vast continuous improvement savings in 2024. Liberty Spark contributed to uncovering these opportunities.

The next big efficiency gain will be a warehouse management system (WMS) that’s expected to make further significant savings for the business. Paper processes will be digitised, goods will be scanned in and out, and the dispatch team can minimise the cost to the business of missed or incorrect orders.

Spark has been key in helping Charlie Bigham’s to document all the processes involved – to ensure these are reflected and improved upon by the WMS.

Behind the scenes, Liberty Spark enabled managers to capture processes and then deliver transformational changes which bring strategic benefits to the business. These include:

• Protecting the company: The IT team enhanced systems and processes to strengthen the company’s security posture, enabling it to become Cyber Essentials Plus certified.
• Upgrading the ERP system: Spark helped managers to overcome the complexity of moving from an on-premise ERP system to SYSPRO 8 running on Microsoft Azure.
• Integrating core applications: Process mapping proved invaluable as the company centralised and integrated its recipe solutions software as well as EDI ordering from supermarkets.
• Investing in growth: A large site extension will provide the space to grow as demand increases and Spark has helped to provide clarity in decision making.