“We’ve been able to scale the business two and a half times since starting to use BatchMaster. The software has continued to grow along with us.”
M. Blake Perlman
Chief Operating Officer
Tata Harper Skincare
Personal Care & Cosmetics
Whiting, Vermont
BatchMaster Process Manufacturing
None
A pioneer in natural luxury skincare, Tata Harper began making its products by hand using natural ingredients grown on co-founder Tata Harper’s organic Vermont farm. However, as the luxury brand took off, executives needed more sophisticated manufacturing functionality than its current software, QuickBooks, could provide. Tata Harper Skincare deployed BatchMaster’s ERP for Personal Care and Cosmetics Manufacturing, which provided formula, inventory, and warehouse management, resulting in streamlined manufacturing, increased vendor visibility, and better data for decision-making.
Tata Harper Skincare is a vertically integrated international beauty brand that develops its own formulas based on natural ingredients grown at its organic farm and sourced worldwide. It manufactures more than 70 all-natural, non-toxic skincare products and distributes them from one of its two Vermont-based facilities.
“Customers are always surprised to learn that we literally make, batch, fill, carton, and ship everything from Vermont, which still is 100% true when it comes to our retail products,” says Carolina Harper, Senior Systems Specialist.
When the company started in 2010, co-founder and namesake Tata Harper used QuickBooks for its full value chain. However, as the company grew explosively, executives found QuickBooks couldn’t handle its complex processes.
“After a fair amount of time, the file size started to balloon, and that’s when we started to encounter challenges with QuickBooks,” says M. Blake Perlman, Chief Operating Officer. “We got to a certain point where we were running into the limits of what the software was able to offer.”
With a limited number of per-user QuickBooks licenses, the more employees Tata Harper Skincare added, the more time everyone spent juggling time in QuickBooks, which limits use in a file to a single user.
“The biggest issue we encountered was people would get into each other’s way performing certain actions in the system. Because of the way the system is built, certain data points can’t be manipulated or used by different people at the same time,” Perlman says.
That limited how the company operated, he adds. “We had to have schedules organized about who would be using the system for what activity at what time.”
Over time, as Tata Harper’s skincare products became wildly successful, the QuickBooks file grew tremendously, which caused it to be unstable and crash. “Then we would have to restore it back to a previous day, which meant going back and re-doing certain work. It impacted account reconciliations and lot traceability, which is critical for a consumer products goods business like ours.”
Eventually, “the cost and time to deal with those circumstances prompted us to look at a solution that was more robust, more stable, and designed for the type of business that we have given the trajectory of the business,” Perlman says.
Worried that operating on a single, all-encompassing application could potentially shut down the whole operation like QuickBooks did, Tata Harper Skincare executives decided to purchase a standalone manufacturing system. “We were incredibly risk averse,” Perlman says. “We didn’t want to have an issue that would prevent us from shipping orders to customers.” Executives also decided not to have an automatic connection between the manufacturing application and the rest of the organization’s systems for security purposes. “That was by design to help us mitigate risk and to make sure the logic of what we’re moving from one system to the other makes sense and is able to be understood,” says Perlman.
Tata Harper Skincare evaluated SAP, Epicor, and other ERPs that offered manufacturing capabilities, choosing BatchMaster to manage its production, inventory, and warehouse. BatchMaster Process Manufacturing provides formulation, packaging management, costing, inventory, production, quality, planning, scheduling, lot traceability and recall, industry-specific compliance, and mobile warehousing. The process manufacturing application can be integrated with existing financial packages and hosted on-premises or in the cloud. In addition to its functionality, BatchMaster provides ongoing support, including online training, a customer portal, and a dedicated support team.
Tata Harper Skincare gained a reliable, stable manufacturing system that increased productivity while reducing manual and duplicate work.
“We’ve been able to scale the business two and a half times since starting to use BatchMaster,” says Perlman. “The software has continued to grow along with us.”
Adds Harper, “We’ve also been able to operate with fewer people than we otherwise would have needed if we hadn’t been using a software as robust as BatchMaster from both a tracking of information standpoint and a reporting standpoint.
Although it was hard to quantify, Perlman says Tata Harper Skincare saved time and, thus, money because employees no longer recreated work like they did when QuickBooks crashed.
“Not only was that a point of frustration for our team members, but it also made it very difficult to keep track of everything because if you entered information and the information disappeared, you didn’t always have perfect visibility as to what you needed to reenter,” Perlman says.
Because BatchMaster specializes in helping process manufacturers, it handles and stores complex formulas. This allows Tata Harper Skincare to bring up one of many formulas stored in the system and follow instructions to make batches consistently.
Sean Brown, Senior Operations Analyst, leverages BatchMaster’s sales order history, formulas, and inventory management capabilities to replenish ingredients. BatchMaster stores its vendor information and order lead time information since many of its natural ingredients are grown and shipped from overseas.
“I also use BatchMaster to check on an ingredient’s current status, such as whether it has passed our quality control inspections and whether it has an expiration date,” he says. “These are all data points stored within BatchMaster, which would be extraordinarily difficult to keep track of in external Excel files.”
“I could not literally do my job without all the reporting access that I have within BatchMaster,” says Brown, adding he did not have access to QuickBooks and would have to ask others to run reports for him. “It has been extremely helpful to have the ability to manipulate reporting within BatchMaster for items that are business crucial.”
Harper also enjoys the ease with which she can export rich data from BatchMaster to create critical reports. “Not only can we analyze how we are performing, but we can also pull data in a granular way to understand our equipment utilization, for, say, our kettle utilization, to see if one is being overused and whether we need to change our usage pattern or the manufacturing schedule,” she says.
“Not only can we analyze how we are performing, but we can also pull data in a granular way to understand our equipment utilization, for, say, our kettle utilization, to see if one is being overused and whether we need to change our usage pattern or the manufacturing schedule.”
Carolina Harper
Senior Systems Specialist, Tata Harper
BatchMaster’s warehouse management allows executives to see raw goods inventory for more than just the raw materials; for example, how many of its different kinds and sizes of glass bottles are available, says Harper. “It’s really the home for our supply chain,” she says.
The company uses handheld devices to pick, pull and pack, and to pull up purchase orders, to properly receive items, confirm that they received the correct amount, and note any damages. “The information is properly logged at that time without having to sit in front of a computer,” Harper says. “These are important processes to have so we can be agile and fast. And BatchMaster allows us to provide a robust e-warehouse solution.
Tata Harper Skincare managers give BatchMaster high marks for its support, training, and customer service.
“They really make sure that you know what your new modules are going to do and how to make them work so your team can hit the ground running, which is so critical after an upgrade,” Harper says.
“BatchMaster is a proficient software that comes with terrific customer support,” adds Perlman. “I can’t say that enough because even if you have fantastic software, if you don’t have the corresponding support to really help you navigate it, set it up properly, mitigate challenges that you encounter along the way, it’s not nearly as good as it otherwise might be, and BatchMaster has both of those elements.”
With BatchMaster Process Manufacturing ERP, Tata Harper Skincare streamlined its production and improved operational efficiency during a critical growth phase. The system gave the brand the stability, data visibility, and support needed to manage its complex manufacturing processes and meet rising demand without sacrificing quality.
“BatchMaster has been an important part of our journey, helping us scale and refine our operations,” says Perlman. “It’s allowed us to grow while maintaining the high standards our customers expect.”
As Tata Harper Skincare continues to evolve, the tools and insights gained from BatchMaster will remain valuable in supporting the company’s ongoing success.
BatchMaster Software | sales@batchmaster.co.in
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