Creating a full order flow for wine distributor and retailer
The Oxford Wine Company has multiple sales channels and processes, which their Operations Director John Chapman wanted to connect better. This includes Sage accounting, shop tills with an EPOS system, online sales, and fulfilment.
A bespoke system connecting these elements is more efficient and seamless, and creates a real business asset in a centralised process.
"Some of the solutions you come up with are genuinely outside-the-box. For our Proof of Delivery system, instead of pushing a costly external setup with complex apps and GPS trackers, you figured out how to harness data simply and cost-effectively. A timestamped, geotagged site picture contains all the empirical data we need, unpacked cleanly on our end."
John Chapman, Operations Director
Read on to find out how we help the Oxford Wine Company:
Improve sales with customer features
Add business value with complete sales management
Constantly improve and adapt a business asset
Independent
Keep control of your website with open source code and notes to help future developers.
Improve sales with customer features
Put customers in control to encourage sales
Like most of our online shops, Oxford Wine Company's website has a range of features that make life easier for customers and encourage more sales. Repeat customers can register and login to the website to save their contact details, store favourite products on a wishlist, and make purchases even quicker.
Product browsing and purchasing is made easier with the ability to search by wine style, country, price and type. And customers can filter the product results (much like Amazon) to their own unique shopping list. Sales are encouraged with special offers, vouchers and discount codes. All of which is backed up by a bespoke shopping basket and checkout process, with secure card payments provided by SagePay.
Before: "We didn't want to be just another transactional, faceless e-commerce site with a nondescript shop layout and thin product descriptions."
After: "By powering our website with a deep custom product database, the depth of our unique content is unparalleled. I know for a fact that other merchants in our industry actually visit our website to pull in-depth product information for their own materials. It has positioned us as the definitive resource in our space."
Add business value with complete sales management
Connecting to Sage accounting for up-to-the-minute stock
The Oxford Wine Company's bespoke system uses Zynk to connect their Sage accounting software to the website. Sage holds stock data and product information, which is sent to the website. Website and shop sales are sent back to Sage to update orders and customer records. So Oxford Wine Company are always up to date, without lifting a finger.
When sales are received online, the system creates an instant PDF dispatch note including a unique barcode. When the barcode is scanned as the order leaves the warehouse, the order status is updated online.
Before: "We were using Sage as an all-encompassing package but only utilising 10% of its functionality. It was extremely clumsy, required its own dedicated on-premise server, and placed massive limitations on how our sales data could actually be used across the company."
After: "We brought the sales order architecture cleanly into the custom CRM you provided, and transitioned the backend to Xero. Now, our custom CRM shoots invoices directly into the backend of our accounting platform via the API seamlessly. It just works — allowing us to ditch the server limitations and heavy overhead costs entirely."
Management of business and customer data
A dashboard for the wholesale sales team lets them view and manage customer leads to generate sales. Management users can see and edit everything, including sales analysis and stock reporting.
Secure login with different user types means each member of staff can have a different view of the system. Having worked with hundreds of online applications, we have developed a framework to quickly create standard features like these. Our clients get more functionality for less cost and time, and we can focus more on the areas that need to be unique.
Before: "Prior to developing this system, a shocking amount of data was entirely uncomputerised. We were trying to manage massive wholesale operations, and our purchase orders were still literally being sent via fax machine."
After: "The core success was consolidation. We brought all of our unique product information, web shop inventory, and offline customer sales orders into one single, powerful digital database where our systems can finally interact dynamically."
Constantly improve and adapt a business asset
With bespoke software you'll never need a new system
Like most of our client relationships, our work with Oxford Wine Company started with an initial project that just kept growing. This was supported by our pro-active consultancy and experience from other clients. Bespoke software grows with your business, so you'll never to buy software again.
Oxford Wine Company keep working with us to make sure their online software grows with their business and customers. The current website is a fundamental asset of their business, used by customers and staff every hour of every working day.
"Employing a bespoke system keeps your costs within a clear budget, rather than stinging you later down the line with expensive monthly fees, hidden add-ons, and restrictive per-user software models."
About Oxford Wine Company
Oxford Wine Company has roots back to 1840 with a specialist shop in Oxford, and now sell wines to wholesale customers, on their website and from their very popular Wine Cafe.
Benefits
Add real business value with a comprehensive online solution that underpins the whole business
Save time with automation, by letting customers do some of the work, and simplicity
Save money with a complete bespoke system - no licence fees, training costs, or support contract
Happier customers and ultimately more sales with features that make every stage simple
"With a bespoke approach, you can clear the page, look at the actual business requirements, and ask, 'What is the absolute best way to solve this?'"
John Chapman, Operations Director
Fancy something more bitesize?
Take a quick look through some of the specific features we've built for clients