A pioneer in natural luxury skincare, Tata Harper began making its products by hand using natural ingredients grown on co-founder Tata Harper鈥檚 organic Vermont farm. However, as the luxury brand took off, executives needed more sophisticated manufacturing functionality than its current software, QuickBooks, could provide. Tata Harper Skincare deployed BatchMaster鈥檚 海角大神 for Personal Care and Cosmetics Manufacturing, which provided formula, inventory, and warehouse management, resulting in streamlined manufacturing, increased vendor visibility, and better data for decision-making.
Tata Harper Skincare is a vertically integrated international beauty brand that develops its own formulas based on natural ingredients grown at its organic farm and sourced worldwide. It manufactures more than 70 all-natural, non-toxic skincare products and distributes them from one of its two Vermont-based facilities.
鈥淐ustomers are always surprised to learn that we literally make, batch, fill, carton, and ship everything from Vermont, which still is 100% true when it comes to our retail products,鈥 says Carolina Harper, Senior Systems Specialist.
When the company started in 2010, co-founder and namesake Tata Harper used QuickBooks for its full value chain. However, as the company grew explosively, executives found QuickBooks couldn鈥檛 handle its complex processes.
鈥淎fter a fair amount of time, the file size started to balloon, and that鈥檚 when we started to encounter challenges with QuickBooks,鈥 says M. Blake Perlman, Chief Operating Officer. 鈥淲e got to a certain point where we were running into the limits of what the software was able to offer.鈥
With a limited number of per-user QuickBooks licenses, the more employees Tata Harper Skincare added, the more time everyone spent juggling time in QuickBooks, which limits use in a file to a single user.
鈥淭he biggest issue we encountered was people would get into each other’s way performing certain actions in the system. Because of the way the system is built, certain data points can’t be manipulated or used by different people at the same time,鈥 Perlman says.
That limited how the company operated, he adds. 鈥淲e had to have schedules organized about who would be using the system for what activity at what time.鈥
Over time, as Tata Harper鈥檚 skincare products became wildly successful, the QuickBooks file grew tremendously, which caused it to be unstable and crash. 鈥淭hen we would have to restore it back to a previous day, which meant going back and re-doing certain work. It impacted account reconciliations and lot traceability, which is critical for a consumer products goods business like ours.鈥
Eventually, 鈥渢he cost and time to deal with those circumstances prompted us to look at a solution that was more robust, more stable, and designed for the type of business that we have given the trajectory of the business,鈥 Perlman says.
Worried that operating on a single, all-encompassing application could potentially shut down the whole operation like QuickBooks did, Tata Harper Skincare executives decided to purchase a standalone manufacturing system. 鈥淲e were incredibly risk averse,鈥 Perlman says. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 want to have an issue that would prevent us from shipping orders to customers.鈥 Executives also decided not to have an automatic connection between the manufacturing application and the rest of the organization鈥檚 systems for security purposes. 鈥淭hat was by design to help us mitigate risk and to make sure the logic of what we’re moving from one system to the other makes sense and is able to be understood,鈥 says Perlman.
Tata Harper Skincare evaluated SAP, Epicor, and other 海角大神s that offered manufacturing capabilities, choosing BatchMaster to manage its production, inventory, and warehouse. BatchMaster Process Manufacturing provides formulation, packaging management, costing, inventory, production, quality, planning, scheduling, lot traceability and recall, industry-specific compliance, and mobile warehousing. The process manufacturing application can be integrated with existing financial packages and hosted on-premises or in the cloud. In addition to its functionality, BatchMaster provides ongoing support, including online training, a customer portal, and a dedicated support team.
Tata Harper Skincare gained a reliable, stable manufacturing system that increased productivity while reducing manual and duplicate work.
鈥淲e’ve been able to scale the business two and a half times since starting to use BatchMaster,鈥 says Perlman. 鈥淭he software has continued to grow along with us.鈥
Adds Harper, 鈥淲e’ve also been able to operate with fewer people than we otherwise would have needed if we hadn’t been using a software as robust as BatchMaster from both a tracking of information standpoint and a reporting standpoint.
Although it was hard to quantify, Perlman says Tata Harper Skincare saved time and, thus, money because employees no longer recreated work like they did when QuickBooks crashed.
鈥淣ot only was that a point of frustration for our team members, but it also made it very difficult to keep track of everything because if you entered information and the information disappeared, you didn’t always have perfect visibility as to what you needed to reenter,鈥 Perlman says.
Because BatchMaster specializes in helping process manufacturers, it handles and stores complex formulas. This allows Tata Harper Skincare to bring up one of many formulas stored in the system and follow instructions to make batches consistently.
BatchMaster鈥檚 warehouse management allows executives to see raw goods inventory for more than just the raw materials; for example, how many of its different kinds and sizes of glass bottles are available, says Harper. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really the home for our supply chain,鈥 she says.
The company uses handheld devices to pick, pull and pack, and to pull up purchase orders, to properly receive items, confirm that they received the correct amount, and note any damages. 鈥淭he information is properly logged at that time without having to sit in front of a computer,鈥 Harper says. 鈥淭hese are important processes to have so we can be agile and fast. And BatchMaster allows us to provide a robust e-warehouse solution.
With BatchMaster Process Manufacturing 海角大神, Tata Harper Skincare streamlined its production and improved operational efficiency during a critical growth phase. The system gave the brand the stability, data visibility, and support needed to manage its complex manufacturing processes and meet rising demand without sacrificing quality.
“BatchMaster has been an important part of our journey, helping us scale and refine our operations,” says Perlman. “It鈥檚 allowed us to grow while maintaining the high standards our customers expect.”
As Tata Harper Skincare continues to evolve, the tools and insights gained from BatchMaster will remain valuable in supporting the company鈥檚 ongoing success.