From Million-Scale Operationsto a Platform Built for Tens of Millions
GeekOnUp × Newnorth Group | A Fresh-Food Supply Chain ERP Built for Sydney Operations
As the Business Scales, Operations Must Scale with It
The Context
NewNorth is a Sydney-based fresh-food distributor managing the full operating cycle—from customer orders and purchasing to cold storage, overnight sorting, route delivery, and financial settlement.
As order volume, SKU count, and route complexity grew, workflows built on individual experience, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools could no longer support a high-frequency, variable-weight, time-critical operation.
GeekOnUp designed a multilingual ERP that brought orders, purchasing, inventory, delivery, settlement, and performance data into one operating system—creating the foundation for a connected in-warehouse sortation platform.
Measured Operational Impact
Purchasing Efficiency0%
Operational Capacity0×
Fresh-food distribution needs more than softwareIt needs software designed around the operation
Fresh-food distribution is high-frequency, variable by nature, and unforgiving on time.
Daily demand changes require purchasing to react to actual sales. Diverse products and variable weights make weighing, labeling, verification, and settlement vulnerable to error.
A short overnight window magnifies the cost of searching, moving, and rechecking goods. Expensive cold storage makes poor movement patterns a direct constraint on productivity and space utilization.
Delivery planning must also account for receiving windows, vehicle capacity, loading sequence, and driver routes.
The Requirement
NewNorth did not need another isolated back-office toolIt needed a system that understood the workflow, connected every role, and operated on the warehouse floor—while continuously building a reliable operating data asset.
In a competitive, margin-sensitive category, advantage comes from disciplined operations: tighter waste control, stronger fulfillment, and better decisions.
Bring order to a complex supply chainTogether, we redesigned how the supply chain operates
The Solution
Layer 1: Business Management
Manage orders, purchasing, inventory, delivery, and financial settlement in one place.
Layer 2: Frontline Execution
Connect smart scales, label printing, sortation lines, and handheld verification so warehouse work moves from manual judgment to system validation.
Layer 3: Operating Intelligence
Turn margin, receivables, inventory, sell-through, and delivery status into management-ready insight.
Move Purchasing Decisions from Hours to Minutes
Time per Purchasing Cycle
Previously, buyers counted stock on site before calling or messaging suppliers one by one—a cycle that often took more than three hours. With demand-led purchasing and one-click batch orders, the client reports that the same process now takes roughly 30–60 minutes.
70%+ Reduction in Purchasing TimeRedesign Warehouse Flow. Unlock Overnight Capacity.
The Solution
Complete weighing, identification,sortation, and verification before loadingto reduce mis-sorts, omissions, and mixed orders.
NewNorth's sorting operation spanseight cold rooms within a short overnight window.Three risks dominate the floor:
- Mis-sorts and Omissions
- Repeated Verification
- Time Lost Finding Goods and Crates
GeekOnUp designed the sorting workflow around real warehouse movement
Once goods leave cold storage, weighing, labeling, and data binding happen as close to the cold-room exit as possible. Each label carries product, weight, customer, order, and route information.
Sortation equipment routes goods to the correct customer bay. Before loading, handheld verification checks every item against its order, stopping misloads, omissions, and exceptions before delivery.
Bind product, weight, customer, order, and route data together
Reduce handwritten weights, manual entry, and repeated checks
Lower the risk of mis-sorts, omissions, mixed orders, and loading errors
Use handheld verification to stop exceptions before loading
Create a data foundation for sorting analytics and customer-issue traceability
Warehouse FlowReducing backtracking and repeated handling across eight cold rooms
NewNorth operates from roughly 800 square meters of usable warehouse space organized around eight cold rooms. With expensive cold storage and a compressed overnight sorting window, every unnecessary walk, repeated lift, and manual handoff adds cost. GeekOnUp redesigned movement across the eight rooms as a largely one-way flow: release from cold storage, smart weighing, label identification, sortation to customer bays, handheld verification, and route-based loading. The new flow reduces backtracking and cross-traffic, limits time at ambient temperature, and makes better use of cold-storage space.
Overnight Sorting Time
Overnight sorting currently takes about eight hours. Based on the client's operational assessment, the new sortation system is expected to reduce that window to four or five hours after rollout.
Built the Capacity to Support 10× Growth
For NewNorth, the value goes far beyond order entryEvery order becomes traceable, analyzable, and ready for settlement
After delivery, order status, actual weight, final price, delivery outcome, and payment status all enter the same data model.Management can monitor sales, gross margin, receivables, inventory turns, customer contribution, product movement, and delivery status—reducing exports, manual checks, and month-end reconciliation pressure.
Management moves beyond reactive troubleshooting, toward observable operations, traceable data, and actionable insight
Manage orders, weights, prices, delivery, and payment status in one system
Reduce cross-system exports, manual checks, and duplicate entry
Ease month-end reconciliation pressure
Analyze margins, receivables, inventory, and delivery performance
Shift management from retrospective investigation to real-time oversight
Millions→Tens of Millions
By connecting orders, purchasing, inventory, delivery, settlement, and operating data—and supporting more disciplined management—NewNorth grew transaction volume from the millions into the tens of millions.
See the Sorting Floor More Clearly
To make a complex warehouse easier to understand, GeekOnUp created a 1:1 digital twin of NewNorth's Sydney sorting facility. The 3D environment is based on the real layout—not a conceptual render—including cold rooms, sorting zones, equipment locations, customer bays, loading areas, and primary movement paths. It provides a clear view of the physical operation and where the digital system fits into frontline work.
One System Across the Supply Chain
Purpose-Built Tools for Every Role. One Shared Operating System.
The platform serves purchasing, warehouse, sorting, delivery, finance, and management teams, enabling every role to work from the same operating data.
We Delivered More Than an ERPWe builta supply chain operating systemdesigned to scale with the business
From purchasing and warehousing to delivery and performance analytics, the platform connects NewNorth's core operation and creates a more efficient, transparent, and scalable way to run the business.
GEEKONUP · NEWNORTH GROUP CASE STUDY