BatchMaster’s Customer Portal reduces costs and increases customer satisfaction levels at Michou Deli

Located within the historic Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, Michou Deli uses locally sourced fresh ingredients to make an amazing array of deli goods, including over 100 different salads. With customer variations, they have almost 3,500 line items that can be ordered. Michou Deli sells its products in local supermarkets, as well as its own retail outlet. They have the flexibility to make speciality food items for specific customer requests.

Michou Deli runs 2 different processes to support their wholesale and retail businesses because they have vastly different requirements:

• Direct-to-end-user selling requires an eCommerce solution integrated into the manufacturer’s website. It simply needs to record orders, take payment, and move the order to the ERP system for processing and dispatch.
• Wholesale-only selling requires much more. The system is not visible on the website but does need to be a web-based solution. Wholesale customers need access to a considerable amount of information about their orders, especially as they are typically placing two or more orders each and every day.

Michou Deli needed software that allowed customers to place orders on-line, then have these orders processed by their current manufacturing software application. Since Michou Deli already employs BatchMaster Manufacturing application to manage their HACCP- operated kitchen operations, Michou Deli decided to add the Customer Portal module to provide the means of managing their wholesale business.

BatchMaster’s Customer Portal module supports Michou Deli’s high-volume transactions and is available to their customers 24/7. Each customer can see only their own data. They can customize their view of that data to suit themselves, and even have it branded with their own corporate identity. The Customer Portal module provides what wholesale customers need – the ability to view historical transactions, review quotes, place orders online, track shipments, print and/or download paid and unpaid invoices. The portal’s ease of use features includes the facility to search, filter, sort, and group data records. Users can also customize the data view by showing/hiding columns in the data grid and saving their preferences for future use. The module is deployed in a secure cloud environment and has real-time integration to the BatchMaster Manufacturing application is real time.

The Customer Portal Module is integrated to Stripe, the international payments infrastructure for the internet, allowing the system to accept payments and send pay-outs. Full Credit Card and ACH payments are available.

Ralph Castellino, owner, estimates that his business is saving more than 60 hours per month in data entry, collaborating with their customers regarding their order status, avoiding data entry errors, etc. After going live with the customer portal, Ralph noted that the first two customers on-boarded alone entered around 125 orders per month, and that they are receiving orders from 38 individual customer stores.

“Its super simple to use the platform. Customer on boarding was simple and payback time for this platform is short. I couldn’t be any happier!”. Regarding the implementation efforts, Ralph added “Look no further than BatchMaster – their team is knowledgeable and professional.”