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| Heavitree Brewery is a familiar name with a long history to those who enjoy drinking and eating out in the West Country with over one hundred public houses across Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.
Mobius Food & Drink is an exceedingly flexible product and Ylem tailored the system to deal with Heavitree Inns’ specific requirements. The system was live within one month from date of order.
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 Rod Glanville
Financial Director
Heavitree Brewery
Heavitree Brewery is a familiar name with a long history to those who enjoy drinking and eating out in the West Country. Heavitree Inns Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Heavitree Brewery and runs one hundred public houses in Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.
Heavitree Inns was started thirteen years ago with twelve good quality public houses but as there was no in-house facility for managing them, this function was outsourced. The pubs bought stock from Heavitree Brewery, wholesalers for the public houses and paid rent for the buildings.
This management arrangement continued until around five years ago when Heavitree Inns brought management of the public houses back in-house. Heavitree did not have a tailor made computer system to cope with this change. They had Amstrad computers and were using Word, Excel and Office Talk, a diary system. The accounts were freestanding on Cobol. None of the computer software they used could be made ‘millennium compliant’.
How Heavitree became involved with Ylem
To manage the business effectively, Heavitree Inns needed to have a system to run the public houses as twelve separate businesses but also to amalgamate them into one company. Rod Glanville, Financial Director, decided that they needed to look at purchasing new technology to help them. It was at this point that Heavitree Inns started talking to Ylem.
Rod explained, “As a local company, Heavitree Brewery has a company policy of using other local companies wherever possible”. Nevertheless, he was surprised to find that the company in which he was most interested was housed in such a remote spot on Exmoor.
Rod’s initial meeting with Ylem’s Technical Director, Bill Wilson, resulted in him “fixing just a few things and that is how we started off!” Bill suggested that Ylem’s Mobius Management Accounting and ERP package could do all that was required. At the time, Rod was a man relatively new to the world of computers and he could not comprehend all that Mobius could do and therefore put the decision ‘on hold’. Very soon, the need to move to a system that would really help became more pressing and again, Bill suggested Mobius.
Obviously, committing a company to changing to a new computer system is a significant decision and Rod quizzed Bill closely on exactly what the product would do. “Bill answered every question I threw at him”, he said. With all the questions answered, the decision to buy into Mobius was made but it had to be installed quickly.
From selection to “go live” in a few weeks
Mobius is an exceedingly flexible product and Ylem tailored the system to deal with Heavitree Inns’ specific requirements. Amazingly, they went ‘live’ on 31 October, within a month of placing the order. On 1 November the company had a new computer system, a new accountant and new employees. This was quite a feat for all concerned, considering that on the 1 September, they did not even have an office!
Rod said. "Mobius was excellent. It did exactly what it said on the tin! Obviously, we had a few teething troubles, but nothing that could not be easily fixed. I use Mobius and have been trained on it but at the time, I bought a system and never even had a computer at home! Basically, this system is the best thing since sliced bread. You really can’t break it but if you do, they (Ylem) just mend it”.
Rod Glanville says that it has far more functionality than they can use and the reports far exceed anything that I have seen in any other accounting package. Having gone ‘live’ in November 2001, by February/March time, the company had all the reports they needed. Reports can be written to do whatever is needed and can be completed in a matter of weeks.
Ylem is an organisation to work with in the future
Speaking of Bill Wilson of Ylem Limited, Rod said, “He listens. I can’t speak highly enough of him. I recommend Mobius highly. To be able to go back to someone you bought a system from years ago and still have the same level of help is marvellous’.
Since that time, the number of staff at Heavitree Inns has significantly grown in number necessitating more hardware to be purchased. Heavitree Inns has recently undergone a major upgrade linked to their telephone system, including fibre optic cabling at their head office.
Talking recently about the upgrade to Heavitree Inns, Bill Wilson said, “It was quite a challenge, in that the offices are situated in a listed Manor House but the working partnership we have with Heavitree is such that we were able to work together to make this a great success. We have enjoyed working with Heavitree and hope that we may continue to do so for many more years to come”.
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