Henderson Foodservice, one of the leading foodservice providers on the Island of Ireland, has reported saving an estimated 10 minutes of data processing time per product – significantly reducing time-to-market across its range of 5,000+ food and non-food products, after adopting Akeneo’s Supplier Data Manager (SDM) to streamline and enhance the onboarding of its supplier product data.
Henderson Foodservice, a division of the Henderson Group, has over 50 years of experience in the foodservice and hospitality catering industry in Ireland. Serving over 4,500 customers across multiple sectors including hotels, restaurants, pubs, education, bakery, wholesale, cafes and coffee shops, workplace catering and travel/leisure. The company has a range of over 5,000 products from locally sourced produce to national brands across fresh, frozen, ambient and non-foods, and supplies the Country Range brand in Ireland, which is widely regarded as the best own brand in the foodservice industry.
In 2020, Henderson Foodservice adopted Akeneo’s Product Information Management (PIM) solution – unifying its product data onto one platform to allow it greater speed-to-market, enhanced product information consistency (which is key to ensure legal compliance), as well as enriching its product record to improve customer experience. However, the process of gathering product data from its hundreds of suppliers and inputting it into its PIM remained time-intensive for its internal team, often requiring manual reviews and checks.
The adoption of Akeneo’s SDM has allowed Henderson Foodservice to streamline how product information is collected, cleaned, enriched and shared. It rebuilt its onboarding process in alignment with SDM’s architecture creating a process where product data is captured directly from suppliers based on key fields, including critical allergen declarations and dietary suitability to ensure full alignment with regulatory and customer requirements. Data is then uploaded by suppliers into the SDM portal where Akeneo’s inbuilt machine learning works to categorise or correct any missing attributes to ensure the smooth mapping of data directly into the PIM. Any errors or missed information, including supporting information such as necessary certification (such as Halal and Kosher), is then automatically flagged with both the Henderson’s team and the supplier to ensure it can be quickly rectified.
To support the ongoing transition to SDM across its network of more than 200 suppliers, Henderson’s has created a tailored onboarding process that includes product demonstrations and training videos housed in Henderson’s supplier portal, explains Andrea Scott, Product Data Quality Manager at Henderson Foodservice.
“This shift to Supplier Data Manager has really empowered our suppliers to take control of the process of supplying product information with suppliers commenting that the SDM system was the easiest onboarding they’ve ever used. Additionally, it has significantly speeded up our internal processes. Product data processing times have improved dramatically – saving us an estimated 10 minutes per product. And for a business such as ours with a significant number of products, each with multiple data points, it is a real game-changer.”
Henderson’s is also utilising Supplier Data Manager to meet the challenges of new legislation. The forthcoming EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will ensure all products consumed within the European Union do not contribute to global deforestation or forest degradation and requires detailed compliance documentation for high-risk items such as palm oil, cocoa, coffee and soy.
Henderson Foodservice is using SDM to gather and store these compliance metrics, ensuring that its product range remains compliant and market-ready ahead of the 2026 deadline.
Justin Thomas, VP sales EMEA North at Akeneo, commented: “We are delighted to support Henderson Foodservice and help it achieve such a significant improvement in the speed and efficiency of capturing product data from its significant supplier base. Food-based industries are rightly heavily legislated and the automation of the collection of product information delivers crucial efficiency for the business while ensuring compliance for its B2B customers and end consumers.”
