Soylent bottles - By JohnnyBGoode11 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Soylent bottles close up
Nuage Consulting group has announced that it has successfully deployed NetSuite at Soylent in under 100 days. Soylent produces a food supplement based on soya and lentils that can be customised for target audiences and also personalised. As the company grew they looked to implement an ERP solution to meet their growing needs.

Good news for Soylent CEO

This announcement is good news for Robert Rhinehart at Soylent who has had a few troubles over the last few months. Last October the company had to recall some of its powder product. This led to an acrimonious spat with one of its suppliers that it blamed for the issue.

This has echoes of the original inspiration of the name of the product and company.  It was named after Soylent, the fictional food substance from Harry Harrison’s 1966 book ‘Make Room! Make Room!’. Later and more famously modified in the 1973 film Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston. In the book and film it wasn’t so much the supplier at fault more the food source itself. This is not the case with Soylent.

The implementation of NetSuite and its ability to accurately track sources of products back to the supplier may have been one of the reasons that Soylent selected the solution. Food safety and supply chain monitoring is now being enforced by regulators around the world. The company called out the controls that NetSuite offered it as one of the reasons it went to NetSuite. It was also keen to take advantage of the scalability that NetSuite offers.

To implement the solution Soylent selected Nuage Consulting group. John Coogan, Co-Founder & CTO at Soylent commented: “We are excited to work with Nuage on the seamless implementation of NetSuite.”

SuiteCommerce purchased?

Lou Balla, President of Nuage (Image credit : LinkedIN)
Lou Balla, President of Nuage

The press release goes on to comment: “Soylent chose NetSuite ERP to enhance its penetration in the omnichannel landscape, as well as to manage its rapid growth and improve overall efficiency.”

While there is no mention that the NetSuite ecommerce solution was deployed it seems possible that this is the case. Nuage have been a NetSuite partner for several years. It was founded to meet the growing demand for cloud-based business applications.

Lou Balla, President of Nuage commented: “We are seeing more and more companies realize the transformative effect of moving their ERP to NetSuite. These companies are streamlining business processes and gaining real-time visibility across their operations. The successful 100 day deployment of NetSuite at Soylent is a clear example of this trend as companies are able to focus on critical business issues and quickly make decisions based on real-time information.”

Healthy at its Soylent heart

Soylent was founded on the premise of delivering healthy, nutritional food that is simple to prepare. The company is heavily involved with worthy causes. In 2016 it committed to donate a minimum of 1 million meals to those who need greater access to nutrition, both in the US and abroad. We couldn’t find a final figure on this donation though.

However, Soylent is involved in several initiatives that may link to the above. They committed to donate a meal to World Food Program USA for each case of Soylent Bars or Coffiest sold. Those meals would be used to feed hungry children in need. In December 2016 they supported the California Association of Food Banks. For each share and retweet they donated $1. This is enough to purchase 10 meals of fresh produce through Farm to Family. They hoped to donate up to 150,000 meals during the month.

These are laudable initiatives for a company that is producing what might become a staple food stuff for many people.  One hopes that they will provide an update on the amounts donated and its success though.

Conclusion

Soylent has chosen a solution that if the company grows over the coming months will scale with them. It will be interesting to find out which modules they have implemented and whether their website will use SuiteCommerce for its ecommerce store.

For Nuage this was a small implementation but with a customer that could grow significantly in the coming months.

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