Scenario
It is a small privately owned company with a large number of products in a complex supply network. It needed a solution to control rapidly expanding operations and ensure that all areas of the business continue to operate smoothly and efficiently.

The solution needed to be low on cost and high in value; it also needed to be highly customisable to meet the specific requirements of a small company operating around the world. A fully integrated CRM component was later required to make sales and marketing more efficient. Finding a capable local partner was essential to putting this solution in place and ensuring that it continues to operate without a hitch.

Requirement
Brewcraft began as a small Wellington-based home brewing store that went into high growth, then moved into wholesale.

The company began operating with the DOS version of Sage Accpac but soon grew out of that and needed to transition to a more comprehensive solution. After looking at a variety of possibilities, they settled upon Sage Accpac for Windows and Enabling was called in to deliver a solution.

Of particular importance to Brewcraft was capability to handle scheduling problems from a wide range of overseas suppliers. New Zealand is the head office for all of the brands in a worldwide distribution. The solution needed to handle things such as raw material lead times, multiple currencies, forecasting, and purchasing issues across a wide range of suppliers. Other issues included a need for faster processing, easier functionality, reduced training requirements, and capability to easily import and export spreadsheet data.

Rapid development and deployment were important, as was relative low-cost.

Enabling worked with Brewcraft to put the features it needed into place so that the company was able to move into full operation very quickly. The initial transition from DOS to Windows was, handled in one weekend between Friday and Monday.

“The new version of Sage Accpac contained the bare bones of what was needed,” says Lytton. “Enabling handled implementation and customisation with a wide variety of new features particularly including forecasting. I don't know if we would have achieved what we did with anyone other than Enabling.

They have a “can-do” attitude that led them to create a solution which met our unique requirements.”

In 2008, Brewcraft was again faced with a need to find a solution that could handle its rapid growth into the New Zealand, Australian, US, and UK markets. The company’s sales and marketing system had been developed internally as a Microsoft Access database. This was now getting unwieldy, and was not well integrated with other systems.

Brewcraft needed a solution that could handle all of their contacts, campaigns and communications and provide all of the efficiency of an up to date CRM solution. Enabling was called in to put SageCRM in place.

Solution
The first solution that Enabling put into place for Brewcraft was the Sage Accpac enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

The main modules of this solution were put into place and augmented by a number of Sage Accpac and third party modules including EFT processing and an online Web store. The Web store contains photos and reference material for all of the products the company supplies to its retail brewing store customer base.

Brewcraft administrative staff includes 12 people in Auckland; 8 in Brisbane, and 15 in Portland, Oregon. The UK office is just getting off the ground. There are “thin client“ computers that access the software in each of the branches, connecting to three terminal servers that access the centralised Sage Accpac system.

The software is hosted externally but Brewcraft owns the servers and handles maintenance.

Sage Accpac proved to be a highly successful solution for Brewcraft’s management requirements. Last year, additional capability was extended by adding Sage CRM, an independent full-featured customer relations management system that provides access to vital customer information anywhere, anytime, and integrates fully with Sage Accpac.

Since it is an independent application, sales staff can access data easily without a need for additional Sage Accpac licenses.

One of the key components in the Brewcraft solution is a massive purchasing report with multiple SQL queries. The report is delivered through Crystal Reports and includes 200 to 300 suppliers. The whole report is exported to Excel, where some manipulations are possible. It is then imported back to Sage Accpac through a macro developed by Enabling. From there, it can be used to create automatic purchase orders.

Another important component of the Brewcraft solution is the new Web store. This required significant modification by Enabling to ensure that the whole system remained operational even as Brewcraft changed offices.

Results
In the initial implementation of Sage Accpac for Windows, the company stopped using DOS on Friday and went live on Monday.

The whole project went off without a hitch-important because Brewcraft is a small international operation and there isn’t much recourse if something goes wrong.

“Enabling’s implementation of purchasing customisation was a huge and critical thing for us,” says Lytton. “They also suggested modifications that would make the solution work better, faster, and more efficiently, based upon their long experience with the product.”

Implementation went very smoothly and involved extensive collaboration between Enabling and Brewcraft personnel.

The Sage Accpac implementation has provided significant benefits for Brewcraft. “Preparing our financial reports is more timely and information at the end of the month is available much quicker than before. The third-party Info Manager module that Enabling installed provides important insight into our sales numbers, and easy access to up-to the-minute data. The Report Runner module, from Add-Ins, provides a central point for having reports produced.

Reporting used to be a clumsy process; we are now able to easily open and access available reports.”

Addition of the SageCRM application is now making contact management and sales more efficient. It incorporates information for both customers and suppliers, and provides instant access to all communications with each contact, including documents such as invoices stored in Sage Accpac.

SageCRM makes our communications management much more efficient, says Lytton. Its functionality was available with a small implementation effort, and it instantly synchs with Sage Accpac.

This is important, because now sales staff know when the customer has been previously contacted by other staff for a credit check, as an example. The main thing is that all customer and supplier information is immediately available at the click of a mouse, and there is no more struggling to keep everything up to date.

The Enabling solution also aided in the company's growth.

The solutions developed for New Zealand were easily replicated for the US, making it possible to get that operation up and running quickly.

Future
Brewcraft is now intending to upgrade to the newest version of Sage Accpac.

There is new functionality available that could ease operations. Although customisations can make an upgrade more difficult, previous upgrades and a good relationship with Enabling will make it possible to move to the new system with relative ease. Brewcraft is now also in a good position to look at additions to its ERP solution. One thing that they would like to add is cash flow management and they would also like to streamline things based upon several years history of usage with the product.

Adding SageCRM last year has provided new functionality which has reduced costs even further and made the operation more efficient. CRM has already added to Brewcraft's flexibility and capability to manage customers.

“We’re still only using about half of the features of the SAGE CRM package,” says Lytton. “We have been making great use of the communications management features, but next on the agenda is to start using the sales management features.

This will let us track sales calls and sales results, and better gauge campaign success. With continued growth, more effective sales management will be crucial.”

The Web store, also added last year, is intended for wholesale customers only but has had a side benefit of making product information available to end customers.

It has proven highly successful. By enabling online ordering, it has cut processing costs and significantly reduced personnel requirements.






> Enabling
P: 0800 ENABLING
W: www.enabling.net

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