Find out how Pagnifique's business grew by developing GeneXus applications to add power to SAP Business One
To grow the operations and expand the business of a regionally oriented bakery, you need very good yeast and even better technologies. This is what Pagnifique put into action by combining SAP Business ONE and GeneXus for SAP.
Pagnifique is a Uruguayan company that relies on cutting-edge technology for the production of deep-frozen bakery products. It was the first one to introduce the concept of deep-frozen bakery products in Uruguay, and quickly positioned itself as a leader in this category.
Since its establishment in 1995, it has continuously invested in technology, which has allowed it to maintain sustained growth over the years. It currently has automated plants in the United States – in Florida (Panamerican Food) – and in Mexico, from where it supplies both large supermarket chains and important customers in the restaurant and hotel channel. The company is well known for being responsive to market trends with high technology equipment that ensures high quality bread.
In the regional scenario of business management involving four countries (Mexico, Paraguay, United States and Uruguay), state-of-the-art software is also an ally when it comes to maximizing business processes. That is why they use Germany's SAP Business One ERP, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software designed for SMEs, whose primary objective is to automate key business functions involving finance, operations, and human resources. Even so, the IT department noticed that besides incorporating their AddOns, they could still improve further by including GeneXus technology for SAP, which helped them develop new functionalities as well as enhance and integrate all the particularities of their business.
The processes on which they originally focused were those related to Logistics and Distribution, which are a large part of the company's success; at the same time, they also developed a web-based system that replaces Excel spreadsheets, making it more customizable for different areas such as Quality.
Within the Logistics module, the process consisted of preparing orders for routing. The application, developed with GeneXus for SAP Systems, is placed between the router – which determines the optimal geographic route to follow (fwlogistic.com/) – and the Pickup list to be entered into SAP. This logistics application that is added to SAP contains and triggers all the business rules for defining orders and delivery criteria (order size, type of customers, etc.). By routing approximately thousands of orders per month, the added value of developing it with GeneXus “is to be able to automate certain criteria for assigning merchandise to orders when orders exceed the available stock,” says Roberto Carriquiry, IT & Systems Manager at Pagnifique.
When using GeneXus, the specific screens follow by default the design guidelines of the SAP Fiori Design System. This SAP Fiori UX theme allows creating applications according to the SAP Fiori style guides, which significantly reduce the time and effort needed to implement those applications and use, as a connection to interact with the data, the method suggested by SAP for Business One: OData. In this way, GeneXus can be easily connected to Business One using OData to create new extensions, as well as to integrate with other internal and external systems and data.
Mr. Carriquiry shares that, after benefiting from the automation and customization of the particular processes of their bakery company, they used these developments as internal success stories to garner support and continue growing through software, in order to make all areas of the frozen bread business prosper. As a result, Pagnifique continues developing mobility solutions.
Mobile applications that have been and will be integrated
The first smart device application they developed was for the business process that allows moving goods within the warehouse.
Currently, the mobile applications under development are aimed at optimizing truck loading and reception of product returns.
In the future, they plan to develop smart device applications for sales representatives; although SAP already has some solutions in this regard, their business process has specific characteristics that once again justify a proprietary development, which will be carried out with GeneXus.
“This reality of specific business processes that require a proprietary development as an extension of SAP ERPs (either SAP S4/HANA or SAP Business One) is what we have always noticed around the world, and what drove us to focus on GeneXus for SAP Systems. We believe that by using GeneXus as a Low-Code tool to obtain fast and customized solutions we can maximize the benefits that SAP offers,” summarizes Mr. Luis Murillo, SAP Program Manager at GeneXus.
Pagnifique manufactures and distributes its products throughout Uruguay and also exports them to the region. “We manufacture more than 2,000,000 boxes of products each year, and distribute them to customers abroad and to our 115 bakeries in Uruguay. All these processes are supported by technology that now makes it possible to identify the product in each individual box,” concludes Mr. Carriquiry.
Since its establishment in 1995, it has continuously invested in technology, which has allowed it to maintain sustained growth over the years. It currently has automated plants in the United States – in Florida (Panamerican Food) – and in Mexico, from where it supplies both large supermarket chains and important customers in the restaurant and hotel channel. The company is well known for being responsive to market trends with high technology equipment that ensures high quality bread.
In the regional scenario of business management involving four countries (Mexico, Paraguay, United States and Uruguay), state-of-the-art software is also an ally when it comes to maximizing business processes. That is why they use Germany's SAP Business One ERP, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software designed for SMEs, whose primary objective is to automate key business functions involving finance, operations, and human resources. Even so, the IT department noticed that besides incorporating their AddOns, they could still improve further by including GeneXus technology for SAP, which helped them develop new functionalities as well as enhance and integrate all the particularities of their business.
Web systems and mobile applications integrated into SAP Business One with GeneXus
The processes on which they originally focused were those related to Logistics and Distribution, which are a large part of the company's success; at the same time, they also developed a web-based system that replaces Excel spreadsheets, making it more customizable for different areas such as Quality.
Within the Logistics module, the process consisted of preparing orders for routing. The application, developed with GeneXus for SAP Systems, is placed between the router – which determines the optimal geographic route to follow (fwlogistic.com/) – and the Pickup list to be entered into SAP. This logistics application that is added to SAP contains and triggers all the business rules for defining orders and delivery criteria (order size, type of customers, etc.). By routing approximately thousands of orders per month, the added value of developing it with GeneXus “is to be able to automate certain criteria for assigning merchandise to orders when orders exceed the available stock,” says Roberto Carriquiry, IT & Systems Manager at Pagnifique.
When using GeneXus, the specific screens follow by default the design guidelines of the SAP Fiori Design System. This SAP Fiori UX theme allows creating applications according to the SAP Fiori style guides, which significantly reduce the time and effort needed to implement those applications and use, as a connection to interact with the data, the method suggested by SAP for Business One: OData. In this way, GeneXus can be easily connected to Business One using OData to create new extensions, as well as to integrate with other internal and external systems and data.
Mr. Carriquiry shares that, after benefiting from the automation and customization of the particular processes of their bakery company, they used these developments as internal success stories to garner support and continue growing through software, in order to make all areas of the frozen bread business prosper. As a result, Pagnifique continues developing mobility solutions.
Mobile applications that have been and will be integrated
The first smart device application they developed was for the business process that allows moving goods within the warehouse.
Currently, the mobile applications under development are aimed at optimizing truck loading and reception of product returns.
In the future, they plan to develop smart device applications for sales representatives; although SAP already has some solutions in this regard, their business process has specific characteristics that once again justify a proprietary development, which will be carried out with GeneXus.
“This reality of specific business processes that require a proprietary development as an extension of SAP ERPs (either SAP S4/HANA or SAP Business One) is what we have always noticed around the world, and what drove us to focus on GeneXus for SAP Systems. We believe that by using GeneXus as a Low-Code tool to obtain fast and customized solutions we can maximize the benefits that SAP offers,” summarizes Mr. Luis Murillo, SAP Program Manager at GeneXus.
Pagnifique manufactures and distributes its products throughout Uruguay and also exports them to the region. “We manufacture more than 2,000,000 boxes of products each year, and distribute them to customers abroad and to our 115 bakeries in Uruguay. All these processes are supported by technology that now makes it possible to identify the product in each individual box,” concludes Mr. Carriquiry.