From the weighbridge to the ledger, without the spreadsheets

The client is a grain and agri-commodities enterprise that buys, stores, mills and trades grain across a network of silos, warehouses and processing sites. Procurement ran on a legacy commodity-buying application. Silo inventory lived in spreadsheets maintained by site clerks. Logistics dispatch was planned over phone calls and whiteboards. Finance ran on an aging accounting package that received everything else as manual journal entries at month end.

The model held together while the operation was small. It broke as volumes and sites grew, because every grain purchase touches the weighbridge, the quality lab, the silo, the contract and the ledger, and each of those steps was being recorded in a different place by a different person. Weighbridge tickets were typed into spreadsheets. Moisture, protein and impurity results were written on paper and applied to supplier settlements by hand, so quality premiums and discounts were argued after the fact. Stock positions differed depending on which file you opened. Regulatory reporting meant reassembling movement records from silo files that did not agree with the finance system.

Kentro was engaged to consolidate this landscape onto a modern SAP-class ERP: a phased implementation covering procurement, silo and warehouse inventory, logistics, finance and statutory reporting, with weighbridges and quality labs integrated as direct data sources instead of paper feeding spreadsheets.

The engagement had to fix data trust, not just replace software. These were the failure points.

• No shared record of stock.: Silo inventory was tracked in site-level spreadsheets with local naming conventions and local rounding habits. Head office, trading and finance each worked from a different stock position, and none of them matched a physical stock count.
• Manual capture at the weighbridge and lab.: Weighbridge operators typed ticket data into spreadsheets and lab analysts recorded moisture and protein results on paper. Supplier settlements depended on re-keyed values, which invited disputes and made quality premiums and discounts hard to defend.
• Dirty, duplicated master data.: Suppliers, materials, storage bins and vehicles existed under multiple names across systems. Any consolidation would fail unless master data was cleaned, deduplicated and governed before migration.
• Regulatory reporting built by hand.: Movement and stock declarations for authorities were assembled from silo files and emails each period. The figures shifted depending on who compiled them, and the audit trail stopped at a spreadsheet.

Kentro implemented a modern SAP-class ERP as the system of record for procurement, inventory, logistics, finance and reporting, delivered in phases so trading and silo operations never stopped. The architecture put master data governance and machine integration ahead of module configuration.

• Master data cleanup before migration.: Supplier, material, storage location and vehicle records from every legacy source were profiled, deduplicated and mapped to a governed model with clear ownership. Migration ran through a staging area with automated validation rules, and only records that passed reconciliation moved into production.
• Weighbridge integration at the gate.: Weighbridge controllers were connected to the ERP through an integration layer, so gross, tare and net weights post directly against the purchase contract and the inbound delivery. A ticket exists in the ERP the moment the truck leaves the bridge, with no manual re-entry.
• Quality lab results drive settlement.: Lab instruments and the sampling workflow were integrated so moisture, protein and impurity results attach to the same inbound delivery. Contract settlement applies quality premiums and discounts automatically from recorded results instead of hand calculations.
• Commodity procurement and silo inventory in the core.: Purchase contracts, price terms and delivery schedules run in the ERP's procurement and batch management capabilities. Silo stock is tracked by bin and batch, with quality attributes carried through storage, blending and outbound dispatch.
• Phased go-live with cutover rehearsals.: Finance and master data went live before the operational modules, then procurement, inventory and logistics followed site by site. Each cutover was rehearsed against migrated data, with reconciliation reports agreed with finance before legacy systems were retired.

The enterprise now runs procurement, storage, logistics and finance on the same record, and the work that used to reconcile them has disappeared.

• Stock positions everyone trusts.: Trading, operations and finance read the same silo inventory, by bin and batch, with quality attributes attached. Month-end stock reconciliation stopped being an investigation and became a check.
• Settlements without re-keying or disputes.: Supplier payments derive from weighbridge and lab data captured at source. Teams stopped retyping tickets and stopped arguing quality deductions from paper records.
• Regulatory reporting from the ledger.: Movement and stock declarations are generated from the ERP with a complete audit trail, instead of being reassembled from site files each period.
• A platform that absorbs new sites.: The phased rollout template means additional silos and processing sites onboard onto governed master data and standard processes, rather than adding new spreadsheets.