Coe Vintners

Wine, Champagne and Spirits Marketing, throughout the UK

Coe Vintners were using a Unix based system which handled all their business processes. Richard Fox, Operations Director felt that the system was extremely limited. "The interface was very poor. It was menu led and very hard to look for products, customers, invoices or delivery notes, and we had plenty to find. On top of that, the reporting facilities were limited and inflexible. Expansion of the system was limited and we really needed to expand! My vision was to implement a new system and improve our working practices by adding a new process on an ongoing basis."

To find out how de Facto S5 can benefit your business, Contact Us now on 01473 417 200 or Email Us.

Evaluating New Systems - Recommendations and Referrals

"We went on recommendations, especially from those in the wine and spirits industry. We investigated several systems, including industry specific ones, but none offered us the power or flexibility of de Facto S5. In addition, many vendors wanted to redesign us around the system, and not the other way, or even meeting half way."

Troublefree Implementation and Transition

"You hear all sorts of horror stories about implementing ERP systems - but we had no major problems. From day one the system was up and running. Our staff have found the system very easy to use, with its familiar windows-based interface. They quickly adapted to new ways of doing things, and have benefited from the many time-saving features of S5."

S5 handles our Enormously Complex Reporting Structure

"One of our key requirements is the utilisation of MAT's - Moving Annual Totals. Our reporting needs to be set to 12 rolling months. We have an enormously complex reporting structure. S5 enabled us to reproduce our previous reporting with ease, and in addition gave us extremely powerful and flexible reporting options for the first time. And crucially, our reporting now is much more accurate. Our old system had to apply today's cost of a product retrospectively when calculating old figures. S5 uses the real cost and therefore entirely accurate figures. Effectively we now have version control - so we can see the price at the time.

The transparency of the figures enables us to easily find what we want from the system, e.g. where things come from, where they are, what they cost, etc. It's easy to get data into and out of S5 too - I utilise Microsoft Access to manipulate data and data access is often a click of a button away. We'll be investing in the upcoming Business Intelligence facilities when they are released."

Saving Time with Base On's

"Base on's have been enormously useful for us. So often we need a new order which is only a slight variation on an existing order. Using 'Base On' we just take the old order and quickly modify it. No more creating orders from scratch!"

Auto-Substitution for Efficient use of Stock and Storage

"We put our deliveries into Bond. When it comes to drawing stock, we need our system to first pull stock from Duty Paid storage, and only on exhaustion do we pull the stock from under bond. S5 copes effortlessly with this, ensuring the most efficient and accurate usage of stock and storage."

Powerful Transport Module

"S5 enables us to easily split orders by route, saving us hours each day over our old manual system. Pigeonholing delivery notes are a thing of the past - it's all the click of a mouse away. After we have allocated the route, S5 prints the notes in Route order and produces the manifests which are emailed directly to the warehouse. S5 checks all the 'weights and measures', and also accounts for waste and packaging. Again we can easily export the resultant files into something like Excel, and find a nicely structured and ordered output."

Responsive Support and Development

"The implementation team spent a lot of time with us, and helped us greatly. Over the years we've witnessed a significant development in the structure and efficiency of the support services.

In addition we had several features developed in the system largely as a result of our needs and prompting. So De Facto Software is very responsive to customer needs if those features are useful to a more general audience. We now use the 'returns module' which De Facto Software originally developed for another customer. Over the years we've added further modules / enhancements as we've needed them."

Instant Access to Information

"Being able to flash up notes by product or customer is a real time-saver. We have over 2,500 products and obviously not every one of our customers always knows their products and what they want. So we can find information easily, often by using notes that we've added to customers accounts, or to products. Again, this helps us enormously when it comes to promotions."

New Discount Module

"We are implementing an automatic upload of customer discounts from a previously designed template. Instead of entering 300 to 1000 prices per customer the Sales Director will enter an authorisation code and all these will be uploaded automatically - no need for checking either - a real time saver!"

Interface with London City Bond

"London City Bond is Coe Vintners primary warehouse. S5 enables them to get orders directly to London City Bond via files.

De Facto designed a report which sends Tally cards to LCB which are automatically populated with the data from the Purchase Order. Previously this process involved passing information back and forth between us and the Bond, via a variety of means and media. Automatically generated PDF's now do the job in a fraction of the time, and without error."

In Short - Multiple Business Benefits

"Being able to easily email customers' invoices and statements is a boon.

We have a very complex pricing structure, which S5 handles with ease.

The Event Management feature of the CRM has been exceptionally useful for us. Any issues with our customers are recorded here and a list is emailed weekly to the reps. This makes us very proactive in our approach to customers."

Further Developments

"We are also working towards : - Olap Cubes (using the new Business Intelligence module) - CTI / TAPI for processing of orders - Enhanced checking facilities for Purchase Ledger invoices. There's so much more in the system for us to explore over time", adds Richard Fox (Operations Director). "The solution is constantly developing and I don't see us outgrowing it as we expand and evolve in the future."