The Company
From artisan bread to co-manufacturing powerhouse
After twelve years supplying fresh bread to restaurants across Georgia as H&F Bread Co., the company shifted focus. They rebranded as Ideation and moved fully into co-manufacturing, operating two production facilities focused on gluten-free, keto, and better-for-you products — cookies, donuts, and brownies for brands that need a manufacturing partner.
With that shift came new operational demands. Two facilities. Contract manufacturing for multiple brands. The need to track raw materials, manage purchasing across sites, and plan production with much more precision than a single-line bakery required.
The Challenge
FlexiBake was installed. It just wasn’t being used.
Ideation had been a FlexiBake customer since 2013, but the system was doing one job: generating invoices. Purchase orders were built manually in Excel. Nobody could easily track raw material usage, waste, or finished goods across either facility. Inventory locations were assigned manually — and when product moved, the records didn’t follow.
The company had outgrown its disconnected processes. Excel couldn’t keep up with two plants, multiple brand clients, and the purchasing volume that comes with co-manufacturing at scale.
“Gone are the days of manual, labor-intensive processes where everyone had to scramble to gather information. The upfront effort invested in the setup has paid off tremendously.”
— Sean Glen, Supply Chain Director, Ideation
The Solution
Same system, fully configured for the first time
Ideation didn’t need a new ERP. They needed to actually use the one they had. When Sean Glen joined as Supply Chain Director, he drove the team to fully configure and embed FlexiBake into day-to-day operations.
They started with the cloud-based version, which gave managers full visibility across both facilities without being on-site. FlexiBake was installed on the iPads the warehouse team already used, giving staff instant access to inventory, lot codes, and traceability data from the floor. They layered in functionality gradually — production planning, costing, and inventory management — once the team felt ready for each step.
The result: a single system tracking raw material usage, finished goods, inventory, and waste across two plants. PO reports that took a full day of walking the warehouse and updating Excel now generated in under an hour.
The Results
Two facilities, one source of truth
- < 1 hour — PO reports generated in FlexiBake vs. walking the warehouse with a spreadsheet
- 2 facilities — Managed in a single cloud-based ERP with remote access from any device
- 100% of staff — Instant access to inventory, lot codes, and traceability on warehouse iPads
- 150+ reports — Pre-built and available without setup for sales, production, inventory, and logistics
“I can access FlexiBake from anywhere in the world. All I need is an Internet connection. People in our company have instant access to not only inventory, lot codes, and numbers for traceability, but they also are able to report on so much information while they’re standing in the warehouse.”
— Sean Glen, Supply Chain Director, Ideation