Theo & Philo’s chocolates reach foreign markets with NetSuite

After ditching its QuickBooks and numerous Excel spreadsheets for cloud technology, Theo & Philo, a bean-to-bar maker of single-origin Philippine artisanal chocolate, has achieved operational improvement and is now selling overseas.

In November 2015, the social enterprise went live on NetSuite. Since then, the company has been using NetSuite for accounting, inventory management, order management, invoicing and purchasing – all within one cloud ERP system. With NetSuite, Theo & Philo is able to better plan and manage sourcing, production and distribution and increase efficiency while saving both time and money compared to the error-prone manual work required by their previous software and paper-based processes.

Founded in 2010, Theo & Philo grew steadily offering more than a dozen varieties of premium, locally-sourced chocolate products. As production volume soared 700 percent to about 14,000 bars a month, the organization faced challenges keeping pace with its previous system and inventory management was handled manually and tracked on paper.
 
“NetSuite is an integral part of our day-to-day operations and a scalable platform for our continued growth,”  said Theo and Philo Founder, Philo Chua. “We’re a lot more efficient and, as we grow, the automated process flows and checks and balances that we need are already in place within NetSuite.”
 
Through its continued global growth and success, Theo & Philo, a social enterprise and grantee of the NetSuite Citizenship software donation program, has been able to help improve social welfare in the Philippines in partnership with Gawad Kalinga, a nonprofit organization committed to ending poverty for 5 million Filipino families by 2024.

The features and benefits that Theo & Philo has been able to achieve with NetSuite include:
 
International growth. Theo & Philo has expanded sales to foreign distributors in recent months, using NetSuite’s multi-currency capabilities for transactions in the Euro for Germany and the U.S. dollar for Japan.
 
Real-time access. Compared to the limitations of its previous QuickBooks desktop application, Theo & Philo now enjoys anywhere, anytime cloud-based capable access to NetSuite with no need for on-premise software and servers.
 
Streamlined inventory and distribution. Real-time data has helped Theo & Philo control inventory and accelerate production and distribution with visibility that helps spotlight issues and areas for improvement.
 
Flexible customizations. Leveraging the NetSuite SuiteCloud Platform, Theo & Philo can adapt NetSuite to unique business needs, for instance, a customization by Tech for Good, a PGE Solutions sister company, enables the company to seamlessly manage consignment inventory and associated sales orders.
 
Future-proofed for growth. As a unified suite, NetSuite offers Theo & Philo functionality for CRM, ecommerce, product assembly, lot tracking and more as the social enterprise continues to grow.