The International Fruit Expo 2023 will be held in China, from 1 to 3 September and Smartcherry is meeting the main exhibitors of products and services to provide a preview of what the fair will be like. More information on en.fruitexpo.cn

Trackerfresh is a company highly specialized in software services for the fruit industry. Through a portfolio of products for processing and packaging factories, distribution and trade. “We can build an adequate information structure for the current and future development of fruit companies,” says the company.

The company’s core value is the accumulation of knowledge in the industry field for nearly 10 years, product research and development closely follow the development needs of the market.

What products or services does your company offer that are relevant to the fruit industry?

Trackerfresh provides software products for the entire supply chain operation in the fruit industry, including software systems for packaging factories in the origin, domestic trade, import/export trade, customs clearance, market wholesale, channel processing and distribution, retail, etc., fulfilling various business scenarios from a business perspective rather than a financial perspective.

What makes your company stand out in the market?

Traditional ERP software is all about the financial perspective, so the supply chain is summarized into purchase orders, sales orders, production orders, etc., for financial bookkeeping purposes. But business is ever-changing, in the fruit procurement scenario, whole purchase, spot goods purchase, import purchase and so on, each procurement mode has very different requirements for the management. So, from just the financial perspective, the needs of business process management cannot be met.

With the development of Internet technology, scenario-based services such as online taxi booking, online shopping, and online food ordering have become deeply ingrained in people’s lives. Traditional ERP systems, disregarding business scenarios, only focus on financial outcomes, making it difficult to meet the industry’s demand with scenario-based applications.

The information management needs can only be understood by delving deep into the fruit industry itself. Therefore, industry software take a vertical perspective prevail, breaking the boundaries of traditional ERP, SCM, CRM, WMS, TMS, and other systems based on their functions. Instead, it focuses on actual business scenarios and uses business terminology that is familiar to the fruit industry. This approach allows for the reconstruction of an industry software system that is more practical and relatable to the industry’s reality. Choosing industry software no longer requires understanding a bunch of unfamiliar software terminology.

For example, we used to sell WMS products, but today we have integrated WMS into business products such as trade, factories, distribution, and agency. In the case of traditional ERP, it may require a significant integration of ERP, WMS, distribution systems, and others to meet the needs of business scenarios. When an order is placed, the distribution system takes the order first, passes it to the WMS for packaging and sorting, and then passes it back to ERP. This integration of multiple systems and interfaces can result in increasing development and maintenance costs in the later stages.

We follow the real business scenario three in one, accumulate business configuration within the application scenario, and can flexibly combine various business development stages of customer applications. Technically speaking, it´s about “low coupling, high clustering”. The “high clustering” aims to thoroughly understand and adapt to the business scenario, rather than rigidly applying predefined solutions.

We are a technical team that has always focused on product development, which is why our Fruit Software product line is relatively comprehensive. In contrast, most SaaS software companies are focused on short-term benefits. They develop a simple product and allocate all resources to sales. In the fruit industry, which is relatively niche from the perspective of management software market, limited financial capacity has resulted in stagnant product development. However, in the long-term competition, our solid product foundation has ultimately set us apart from the competition and allowed us to stand out.

What are the main challenges your company faced in the fruit industry market and how have you overcome them?

The main challenge at the moment is still the relationship with traditional financial software. Many customers want us to achieve a balance sheet, and we have developed solutions for over a dozen customers, ranging from generating accounting vouchers to achieving balance sheets. Unlike traditional ERP software, we do not have to consider a wide range of industries in the financial system. Developing a financial module specifically for the fruit industry is not technically complicated. However, it brings along challenges in implementation and maintenance. The scope of financial concepts is extensive, reaching up to the group level.

Ultimately, we made the decision to continue developing our own financial module to meet the integrated business finance needs of many small and medium-sized fruit companies. The cost allocation and accounting vouchers within the fruit industry are relatively fixed, reducing the cumbersome use of two systems for customers. For large-scale companies, we establish integrated solutions with mainstream financial systems to meet financial auditing requirements. We walk on parallel paths, ensuring both aspects are well-implemented.

What new products or services will your company display at the 2023 International Fruit Expo?

We have been developing a software product where fruit can also be processed as ingredients, semi-finished products or small packaged finished products, closer to the channel and consumer needs.

We have been piloting this in some partner factories, gradually iterating and evolving, and hope to be able to showcase it to interested customers at the Fruit Expo in September.

What business opportunities does your company expect from the 2023 International Fruit Expo?

The International Fruit Expo is an important platform for us to showcase our products. On the one hand, it is a communication within old friends. As technicians, who spend most of our time working on our products, the Fruit Expo gives us a platform to communicate with our regular customers. Secondly, we can promote our products. We can show our customers what new products and developments we have and let them know about us.