S H Jones

ERP for a Wine and Spirits Retailer and Wholesaler

S H Jones previously utilised a vertical market solution and with continued growth they found the lack of development and upgrading of the system problematic and costly. S H Jones decided to source a new business system in early 2004.

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

Finding the Right ERP System - Evaluating Solutions

Financial Controller at S H Jones, Carol Kendal, recounts how they went about choosing a new solution: "We decided the best approach was to talk to the companies that supply us in order to see what works and what doesn't work in our marketplace. We evaluated a number of systems and on the basis of demonstrations decided that de Facto S5 was the ideal solution for us."

Implementation - Negotiating Change with De Facto's Support

"Implementation was a big challenge. We needed to have the system up and running with all the kinks ironed out in time for our busy pre-christmas period. If we couldn't make that deadline it would have meant delaying implementation for a full six months. With the help of De Facto's implementation team, we managed to negotiate all the hurdles, and have the system working for both our retail and wholesale sides of the business.

Given the complexity of a number of aspects of our business, and the nature of the transition from our old system to the new, we can't pretend that everything was perfect from day one. But with De Facto on hand and the use of their Support services, there's been an ever increasing convergence between our methods of working and those of de Facto S5. Any initial resistance from Staff to changes of working methods were also gradually overcome and now the whole company benefits from the improved facilities in place."

The Ability to Delve into the System is First Class

"The availability of information and all the processes related to that info has been a boon. When one of our customers rings up with an enquiry, it's very easy to locate the invoice and from there go to the relevant transaction details from the same window. We no longer have to jump out of the system and check printed reports, or open up window after window in order to compare the data. We can follow processes through, and drill down to the level of detail we require, on demand, and all from within the same window."

EPOS Integration with de Facto S5 ERP

Kieran Galliard, General Manager at S H Jones elaborated on the integration of their EPOS system with de Facto S5. "We'd bought an off-the-shelf EPOS package for our 4 shops, 3 of which are remote from our warehouse and office location. Tying the two together has enabled us to have much greater control over our stock, and increased the accuracy of our transactions. It's forced us to tighten up on processes, which can only be a good thing.

The updating of the EPOS system with de Facto S5 takes place overnight. There's a small program which interrogates the shops and establishes what they've sold throughout the day. The results appear in an interface file (in this case an Excel spreadsheet), and the information therein is then passed to S5 via EDI. Similarly, the program interrogates another interface file on De Facto's server (again a spreadsheet in this case) which holds the required info on any new products which we stock, or price changes. Our EPOS system is then updated accordingly.

We are proud of what we've achieved in creating our integrated systems. Our biggest challenge was in enabling the two systems to work perfectly together when at first we had no experience in this. The EPOS package was originally conceived for single outlet operations, but we've now got the whole thing working together and the benefits have been great. We no longer have the sort of difficulties in explaining stock movements as before. Stock moves out of the shops for all sorts of reasons other than pure sales, such as wholesale representatives who need samples for clients, breakages, or transfers to another shop. S5's integration with the EPOS enables us to record all this accurately, avoiding anomalies in our stock levels and accounts."

Accurate Bonded Warehouses and Duty Handling

Carol Kendal continued: "Some of our products are sourced in the UK and are purchased either as Duty Paid or Duty Deferred. We also ship wines ourselves from individual vineyards. These wines are either delivered to our warehouse in Banbury as Duty Paid or delivered to our Bonded Warehouse and stored under bond where upon the duty and VAT only become payable once they are cleared and removed to a duty paid store."

de Facto S5 is able to be programmed to add the necessary duty onto the value of the products where and when required. These formulae can be updated as required, whenever duty rates change. We've been able to improve the accuracy of our information in this area, which has traditionally been a challenging one in our line of business."

Changing from Paper towards Paperless Office

"We've experienced a reduction of paper with de Facto S5. We no longer have to print off duplicate copies of our invoices or lengthy month end reports. These can be printed as and when required. For example, when the VAT man comes we can just print off the particular period he wants to examine. We don't have to store the lot, and keep copies of everything."

End of Month and End of Year both Benefited

"Our End of Months have benefited greatly from the flexibility of the system and the ability to re-open a period if data has been omitted. Everything's now within the ERP solution, and can be amended as required."

de Facto S5 - A Powerful Tool in the Right Hands

"Overall, de Facto S5 is a much more flexible system which is tremendously powerful if you know how to get the most out of it. There's always more to learn, and it's probably about time, now that everything is running smoothly, that we undertake some further investigation with De Facto's people to maximise its potential. As our operation expands, then so has the number of sales representatives we have employed who require hands on information which must be accurate and up to date. S5 has enabled our processes to keep pace with our growth, and we don't foresee that changing in the future", said Carol Kendall in conclusion.