Aphria Handles Explosive Growth with Rootstock Cloud ERP
Rapid Growth Demands a Modern ERP System
Aphria is one of the largest cannabis companies in the world. As cannabis becomes legal in more places for both recreational and medicinal purposes, the company has been expanding operations, capturing more market, and focusing on the future. But with their roots in agriculture and slow, paper-based processes holding them back, it was time for a modern change. Their quest for a complete seed-to-sale system led them to Rootstock.
Our newest customer story, Aphria: Supporting Explosive Growth with Rootstock Cloud ERP, explains how they took on a complete modernization of their operational systems by using Salesforce as the foundation, and then adding to optimize production, manage inventory, improve profitability, and more, and adding ComplianceQuest’s Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) to support quality management processes.
Aphria was founded in 2013. For a cannabusiness navigating the fast-changing landscape of this industry, however, that makes them one of the pioneers. In less than a decade they’ve gone from growing a few medicinal cannabis plants to managing a few million plants across several markets. The company’s revenue has skyrocketed as well, growing 542% last year.
Obviously, it would be nearly impossible to continue that growth trajectory using paper-based processes and operational systems designed for just a fraction of their annual production targets. Couple that growth with the operational complexity of expanding to more than 22 locations while also managing their vastly differing quality and compliance regulations, and Aphria needed a modern, robust, and proven operations system.
“When I joined the company, the initial technology that was in place was very fatigued,” said Tim Purdie, Chief Information Officer & Chief Information Security Officer of Aphria Inc. “Those early investment decisions were sound when the company was sub-300 people. We’re about 1,200 people today. My job was to make sure that we’re matching the growth trajectory of the company in a global way.”
The Solution: Rootstock Cloud ERP on Salesforce
Aphria started by implementing Salesforce as the main platform, but then quickly looked to address their seed-to-sale operational demands with Rootstock Cloud ERP and ComplianceQuest EQMS. They chose Cloud ERP because it’s an enterprise-grade solution that has the flexibility to evolve with their business, but also because it meets the stringent , and is tightly integrated with their Salesforce platform.
“Cloud first is super important to our flexibility to respond to changes in any of our market conditions,” explained Purdie. “Rootstock transformed our processes related to operations, inventory and production overnight.”
Aphria is now using Cloud ERP across their business, including for:
- Order processing,
- Production management,
- Supply chain management,
- Lot and serial number trackability and traceability,
- Compliance reporting,
- Costing, and
- Financial management.
Since Cloud ERP is built on the Salesforce platform, the combination gives manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain organizations a single platform on which to grow and manage their businesses. This inherently eliminates any gaps between ERP and CRM so companies can be both more agile and more customer centric.
ComplianceQuest EQMS
ComplianceQuest’s EQMS is also helping Aphris support quality management processes, quality control, and risk management across Aphria’s business. The combined solutions further support compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Good Production Practices (GPP).
“Aphria is setting the standard as a worldwide leader in the cannabis industry through a diversified approach to innovation, corporate citizenship, strategic partnerships and global expansion,” said Purdie. “With these system implementations, we’re now technologically equipped to take our competitive advantage to new levels of market leadership.”
Read the full Aphria story here.
