Braintree partners with Matumi Fresh to maintain exceptional levels of customer service and satisfaction by optimising legacy technology.
Matumi Fresh, a family-run business established in 1995, provides fresh fruit and vegetables to the five-star hospitality industry. The business has grown from a small local supplier of high-quality goods to lodges, hotels and restaurants in the Mpumalanga region to become a trusted name in hospitality distribution with more than 100 employees and a fleet of 30 delivery vehicles. The company needed to streamline its operations and optimise and update its systems to ensure it could efficiently keep up with customer demand, and this led them to Microsoft Business Central.
“When our customers order something, they need to get exactly what they want, when they want it, which means we need systems capable of meeting this demand perfectly,” said Nick Wood, General Manager at Matumi Fresh Group. “Our inventory management, especially from a cost accounting point of view, wasn’t keeping up with our needs, and we also wanted to refine and optimise our procurement, back-end and logistics systems. It was essential that our operations levelled up to business growth.”
The original system could not keep up, but the Braintree offering for Matumi Fresh had exactly what the company required. The system recommended by Braintree included the right processes and scale. As Wood said, “There was very little we needed to add; Braintree understood what we wanted right from the start.”
From farm to infrastructure modernisation
Matumi Fresh needed a modern, integrated system capable of handling rapid inventory movement, complex cost accounting and daily price fluctuations. The existing platform lacked flexibility, and they wanted more accuracy across inventory and reporting. Braintree removed the complexity with a smooth migration from on-premises legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, which is hosted entirely in the cloud and now has more than 13 active users benefiting from its capabilities.
The project started with a full migration from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, followed by infrastructure optimisation to ensure reliable connectivity across all locations. Once stability was achieved, the business transitioned to its ERP in the Microsoft ecosystem – a hefty move that was simplified by Braintree’s longstanding expertise.
“From the beginning, the Braintree team was incredible,” said Wood. “They were patient and professional and always on hand to provide support. It felt like a true partnership. Now our entire environment lives in the cloud, and everything has been carefully mapped and migrated to remove the core issues that were affecting our operations.”
Automation and accuracy
One of the standout achievements from the integration was the custom price list functionality. The fresh produce market is highly volatile, and prices change daily based on availability and cost, so previously updating price lists took up a significant amount of time each week. The consulting team, led by Eben Prinsloo, spent a significant amount of time working on site with Matumi to ensure the solution mapped back to the company’s needs, and the results speak for themselves.
Matumi Fresh now has an automated solution within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that adjusts selling prices to maintain a consistent gross profit margin based on the latest cost price and that has transformed efficiency and reduced admin considerably.
“It used to be a task that took us two to three hours, three times a week,” said Wood. “Now it’s done in minutes, and the system is incredibly accurate, so we have complete control and confidence in its capabilities.”
The automation has saved the company a lot of time, and it has improved price accuracy, reduced manual errors and had a direct impact on profitability.
Smooth and clean
Collaboration and innovative thinking were the key success factors. Matumi Fresh took ownership of data preparation and ensured 90% of the information was clean and structured before the migration. The result was a four-month implementation from initial scoping to go-live with minimal disruption to operations.
“The plan was to start on Friday and finish by Sunday, and by 6 pm on the Sunday, the last transaction was in and the system was ready,” said Jarred Smits, Sales Executive for Business Applications at Braintree. “The business now benefits from a scalable and agile Microsoft ecosystem, which includes AI-driven tools that allow it to deepen its capabilities across key areas like demand forecasting and inventory optimisation.”
Braintree continues to support Matumi with ongoing enhancements, including a roadmap for AI-assisted demand forecasting, Power BI integration and potential future expansion into Microsoft’s Customer Engagement applications. Throughout the process, the relationship between the two teams evolved into a true collaboration.
“It wasn’t a supplier-customer relationship,” says Wood. “It was a partnership that’s given us the confidence to take the next steps in our business.”
The implementation has fundamentally changed how the company approaches business and operations, giving them more confidence in system visibility, and more control over operations and scalability.