From Spreadsheets to EUDR-Ready Operations in 9 Months
A mid-sized European coffee importer sources from cooperatives across Latin America and Africa. They engaged Brainstack Technologies to implement Odoo ERP from the ground up. The build automated sales, purchasing, and inventory — and wove EUDR due diligence and compliance workflows into the core system.
Client Overview
- Client
- Mid-sized European coffee importer (name withheld per confidentiality agreement). Reference calls available under NDA for qualified prospects.
- Industry
- Coffee Import and Distribution
- Region
- Europe, sourcing from cooperatives across Latin America and Africa
- Scale
- ~600 purchase orders annually, 40+ farmer cooperatives, 100+ B2B customers, 3 European warehouses
- Engagement Duration
- 9 months — 4 phased implementation cycles with ongoing optimisation reviews
- Challenge
- Manual processes across sales, purchasing, and inventory; imminent EUDR compliance requirements mandating deforestation and production legality due diligence
The Challenge
The client faced mounting operational challenges with their business relying on spreadsheets, email chains, and manual data entry across all departments. The company processed approximately 600 purchase orders annually from 40+ farmer cooperatives, managed relationships with over a hundred B2B customers, and handled inventory across 3 European warehouses. Every transaction required manual verification, data entry in multiple places, and time-consuming reconciliation processes.
The regulatory deadline: With the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) coming into force — requiring proof that coffee imports are deforestation-free and produced in compliance with the laws of the country of production, plus Due Diligence Statement (DDS) preparation for regulatory submission — the client needed a system that could handle operational automation and regulatory compliance simultaneously.
EUDR enforcement is scheduled for December 30, 2026 for large and medium operators (June 30, 2027 for micro and small operators).
The immediate EUDR challenges were practical, not hypothetical:
- Geolocation data collection: The EUDR requires geolocation coordinates for every plot of land where sourced commodities were produced. The client had no centralised system to collect, store, or validate this data across dozens of cooperatives.
- Due diligence documentation: Proof of deforestation-free sourcing and production legality was scattered across emails, shared drives, and paper records at cooperative offices — impossible to audit at scale.
- Risk assessment: No systematic way to evaluate which cooperatives or sourcing regions carried elevated deforestation or compliance risk.
- Traceability gaps: No reliable chain linking a specific shipment back to the farm plots it originated from — a core EUDR requirement.
The Solution: Phased Odoo Implementation
Brainstack Technologies partnered with the client to implement Odoo ERP from the ground up, taking an iterative approach that prioritised quick wins while building toward full automation and EUDR compliance.
Phase 1: Foundation and Sales Automation Months 1–2
Brainstack began with a comprehensive discovery workshop to map the client's existing processes. We configured Odoo's core modules with coffee-specific customisations:
- Product catalogue with coffee varieties, origins, processing methods, and certifications
- Customer hierarchy reflecting roasters, distributors, and retail partners
- Multi-warehouse inventory structure
- Currency management for international transactions
Phase 2: Purchase and Supplier Management Months 3–4
Brainstack worked closely with the client's procurement team to digitise their supplier base, creating detailed supplier profiles for each cooperative with contact information, payment terms, historical pricing, quality ratings, and GPS coordinates of farming plots — laying the foundation for EUDR geolocation compliance.
For cooperatives that initially provided only approximate locations, Brainstack built a data enrichment workflow — cooperative field officers can submit updated coordinates through a mobile-friendly form, which are validated against the expected sourcing region before being committed to the registry.
The purchase process now operates with minimal manual intervention through automated RFQ generation, three-way matching systems, and smart receiving workflows.
Phase 3: Inventory Optimisation Months 5–6
Building on sales and purchase automation, Brainstack implemented sophisticated inventory controls including deterministic min/max reordering rules with lead-time-based replenishment, comprehensive lot traceability, and automated stock valuation.
Lot traceability was designed with EUDR requirements in mind — each inventory lot is linked back to the cooperative, sourcing region, and plot-level geolocation data collected during supplier onboarding. This creates a verifiable chain from warehouse shelf to point of origin.
Phase 4: EUDR Compliance Automation Months 7–9
The most technically complex phase addressed the client's EUDR due diligence obligations. Under the regulation, operators must demonstrate two things before placing coffee on the EU market: (1) that the product is deforestation-free — not sourced from land subject to deforestation after December 31, 2020, and (2) that it was produced in compliance with the relevant legislation of the country of production — covering land-use rights, environmental protection, labour rights, human rights, and other applicable laws.
Deforestation Risk Assessment
Brainstack built a vegetation change analysis pipeline that uses publicly available Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to assess deforestation risk for each registered plot. The analysis compares vegetation indices between the EUDR baseline date (December 31, 2020) and recent imagery to detect significant forest cover loss.
When a new cooperative or plot is onboarded, the system retrieves available satellite imagery for the plot location covering the period from the EUDR baseline date to present
Vegetation index analysis identifies whether significant forest cover loss has occurred on or around the plot since the baseline date
Each plot receives a deforestation risk classification: green (no detected loss), amber (inconclusive — persistent cloud cover, insufficient imagery, or marginal changes requiring manual review), or red (significant vegetation loss detected)
Risk assessments are refreshed periodically as new satellite imagery becomes available — not on every purchase order, but on a regular cycle or when a compliance officer triggers a manual refresh
When a purchase order is created in Odoo, the system checks the latest risk assessment for the relevant cooperative's plots. Red-rated suppliers are blocked until a compliance officer reviews the findings
Production Legality Due Diligence
The EUDR's legality requirement obliges operators to collect adequately conclusive and verifiable information that sourced commodities were produced in compliance with the applicable laws of the country of production. For coffee sourced across multiple countries in Latin America and Africa, this means managing documentation across a wide range of legal areas — land-use rights, environmental regulations, labour laws, and more — for each cooperative in the supply chain.
Brainstack built a due diligence documentation module within Odoo that provides a structured framework for collecting and tracking the documentation needed to support EUDR legality compliance for each cooperative. The module includes fields for land-use records, environmental documentation, social audit reports, and relevant certifications — with automated expiry tracking and reminders for time-sensitive documents. When documentation is missing or incomplete, the system flags the gap in the procurement workflow so the compliance team can prioritise outreach to the cooperative before it becomes a blocker.
Cooperatives with incomplete documentation, expired audits, or lapsed certifications are automatically flagged in the procurement workflow. Cooperatives with critical gaps are blocked from new procurement until the gap is resolved; those with non-critical gaps proceed with a visible compliance flag.
Business Impact
After nine months of iterative implementation and optimisation, the client achieved measurable transformation across operations, compliance, and financial performance.
- Substantial reduction in manual data entry across sales, purchasing, and inventory
- Materially faster order-to-cash cycle
- Roughly 5 FTE-hours freed up daily, redirected to supplier relationship management and market expansion
- Estimated annual savings in operational labour costs — derived from roughly 5 FTE-hours freed daily at blended European labour rates
- Meaningful reduction in excess inventory — freeing working capital previously tied up in overstocked warehouses
- Improved gross margins from above-99% order accuracy (reducing costly corrections, reshipments, and customer credits) and faster order-to-cash cycles
- Due diligence preparation effort reduced from manual document gathering to exception-based review within the ERP
The Brainstack Approach: Keys to Success
Rather than a big-bang approach, Brainstack deployed functionality in digestible phases. Each phase delivered tangible value while building the foundation for subsequent automation.
Sprint reviews and monthly steering committee sessions ensured alignment between technical delivery and business objectives. We conducted hands-on training sessions for each user group, created role-specific video tutorials covering daily workflows, and maintained ongoing support with monthly optimisation reviews — ensuring the client's team could operate and evolve the system independently.
All custom modules were delivered with inline documentation and a technical operations manual, enabling the client's internal IT team to maintain and extend the system without ongoing dependency on Brainstack.
Conclusion
This engagement demonstrates how comprehensive ERP implementation, combined with structured compliance workflows, can modernise traditional commodity industries facing complex regulatory requirements. By partnering with Brainstack Technologies, the client replaced fragmented manual processes with a unified system where every purchase order, shipment, and supplier relationship is traceable, risk-assessed, and backed by organised due diligence documentation.
With EUDR enforcement scheduled for December 30, 2026 for large and medium operators (and June 30, 2027 for micro and small operators), the client has the infrastructure to collect geolocation data for every sourcing plot, assess deforestation risk using satellite imagery, maintain production legality documentation for each cooperative, and prepare the audit trail needed for Due Diligence Statement submission.
Relevant for Australian Businesses
Australian companies exporting timber, beef, coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil, or rubber to the EU face the same EUDR compliance requirements — with enforcement beginning December 30, 2026. The geolocation collection, due diligence workflows, and risk assessment automation demonstrated in this engagement apply directly to Australian agricultural supply chains.
Brainstack's Melbourne-based team can bring this implementation approach to Australian operators and exporters preparing for EUDR compliance. Whether you need a standalone EUDR compliance system or full ERP integration, we have the domain expertise and delivered proof to back it up.
Need Odoo ERP or EUDR Compliance Automation?
Whether you're evaluating Odoo for your operations or facing EUDR compliance deadlines, our team has delivered both — together — in a single 9-month engagement. Book a 30-minute consultation to discuss your requirements. No obligation, NDA first.
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