ORGANICS ERP

Organics’ cosmetics manufacturing runs through sales, R&D, packaging design, purchasing, planning, plant, warehouse, QA, QC and finance, and each hand-off between them — a brief becoming a formula, a formula becoming a bill of materials, a material shortfall becoming a purchase — has to reach the next team intact and stay traceable afterwards. ORGANICS ERP is also the company’s system for IPO readiness: as it prepares to list on the stock exchange, every transaction has to show who created it, who approved it and the evidence behind it. The build had to put every department on one shared record behind a single sign-in, with each person seeing only the work their role and department allow. It also had to follow the documents the office already files, so the system fits the way the factory works rather than the other way round.

We didn’t start from the technology. We followed one product from the day the customer’s brief arrives to the day it leaves the warehouse, then gave each department its own workspace on one shared set of records. When one team finishes its part, the next team already has it: no files passed around, nothing typed in twice, and every employee reaches all of it with a single sign-in.

1. 1. Sales: a customer brief becomes a product project

   Sales keeps each client’s brand, brief, samples and quotations in one place. An agreed brief opens a new-product project that every department sees with the same status, so sales can tell a customer where their order stands without calling round the factory.

2. 2. R&D: the approved formula is the one that gets made

   R&D develops formulas, runs trials and stability tests, and requests chemicals in the same system. Every change to a formula is saved as a new version, and once a version is approved it is the one handed to production: no retyping, no working from the wrong file.

3. 3. Packaging design: every component known up front

   The design team handles the packaging design and builds each product’s packaging list. It sits alongside the R&D formula, so before production starts the company knows every material and component a single unit needs.

4. 4. Planning and plant: start only when materials are in hand

   Planning turns production requests into a production plan, allows for material lost in production and schedules the work on each station’s calendar. The floor can start a batch only once every material line has been issued, and QC check-ins are recorded against that batch.

5. 5. Purchasing: a shortfall becomes an order straight from the plan

   When the plan is short of material, a purchase request opens straight from it. Purchasing asks several suppliers for prices, compares the quotes side by side, issues the purchase order, receives the goods and handles returns to the supplier in the same place, and orders and receipts still print on the company’s own forms.

6. 6. Warehouse and quality: nothing is used before QC passes it

   Every incoming lot has to pass QC before it can be used. The warehouse tracks stock lot by lot with status labels, issues the earliest-expiring stock first, flags near-expiry and low stock, runs stock counts, and receives finished goods before they go out on delivery orders. QC testing and QA release belong to different people.

7. 7. Finance and management: numbers that hold up, ready for an IPO

   Finance and accounting handle customer and supplier invoices, receipts, bank reconciliation, budgets by cost centre and the financial statements in the same system, and whoever prepares a document cannot approve or post it. Management gets one approvals inbox across departments, and every change records who made it, when and what it changed: the evidence trail the company needs as it prepares to list.

ORGANICS ERP is live in production for 500+ users. User acceptance testing runs alongside it, and fixes are promoted to production as they pass.

• Every department, one system

  Each team works in its own console behind one sign-in, seeing the work its role and department allow.

• Traceable from brief to stock

  A product’s brief, formula, packaging list, production request, purchases, receipts and QC results stay linked, so any step can be traced back.

• Approvals that hold up

  Self-approval is refused by design, and every change is logged with who made it and what it changed.

• Production on materials in hand

  Shortfalls turn into purchase requests from the plan, and production starts only once every material line has been issued.