Williams Your Foodservice updates IT
By Retail Technology | Thursday November 21 2013
Cash and carry distribution operator works with supply chain software specialist to update systems to speed and support its expanding distribution business
Williams Your Foodservice has selected Business Computer Projects (BCP) to supply a 12-user Accord system to support its fast-growing distribution business.
A member of the Today’s Group, Williams Your Foodservice (formerly Bridlington Cash & Carry) operates a large cash and carry business in Bridlington, from where it now also offers a next-day delivery service across the full ambient, chilled and frozen product range. Customers include pubs, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, educational establishments and contract/industrial caterers who prepare fresh food on site.
Having grown steadily since it was founded 12 years ago, its existing systems – a mixture of manual/paper processes alongside a heavily bespoked standard IT system – were struggling to keep pace, particularly with the expanding delivered side of the business. Telesales screens were slow and they were having difficulty distinguishing between cases and split cases while forecasting for the strong seasonal nature of the company’s business was proving inadequate.
End-to-end supply chain package
After evaluating the market, Williams Your Foodservice opted for BCP’s complete Accord enterprise resource planning (ERP) package to cover all aspects of its business, including radio frequency (RF) technology for goods in and picking operations and advanced forecasting to help with the seasonal nature of the company’s business and the variable date around Easter, sporting events and festivals.
Key to the sale was Accord’s comprehensive functionality, in particular its market leading telesales and purchase ordering functionality. Simon Williams, Williams Your Foodservice director, said: “We’d been struggling with our old system for some time and could see that Accord® offered a fully integrated system covering all aspects of our operations, including, as standard, much of the functionality we’d had to have specially built in to our previous system as well as a wealth of other features.”
The implementation was timed to avoid the company’s busy summer season. Williams added: “I’m very happy with the information we are already getting out of the system and with the implementation in general. It went far smoother than the previous two system implementations I’ve been involved in and the BCP team showed unflappable professionalism and dedication to the project.”