Suffolk-based brewer Adnams has launched an online store selling its beers plus a selection of wines, kitchenware and giftware direct to the general public. Running on System i and developed by Computer Software Group, the web store processes sales and payments automatically, saving time and money on administration. It also includes built-in CRM functionality, allowing Adnams to track who’s buying what so the company can be more targeted in its marketing and improve customer services.

As well as brewing beers, Adnams is an award-winning wine retailer with stores across the South East and a mail-order service, owns two hotels and has a tied estate of 80 pubs in East Anglia and London.

Greg Huggins, Adnams IT manager, says: “The retail side of our business is doing really well -- we’ve just opened more retail outlets in the South East with more planned for the coming year. We expect the online store to be a major part of our business going forwards as it is now so convenient for our customers.”

The new web store is powered by the TALENT e-business software package developed by Computer Software Group for trade and consumer online selling. It integrates in real-time to back-office financial, sales and ERP systems on System i.

Huggins says: “We wanted an e-commerce package that would process transactions automatically, as well as being easy to manage. After looking at the different options available, we selected TALENT e-business. It stood out as having the best functionality and integrated to our existing System i-based accounts and sales order systems.”

Previously, Adnams offered internet sales through a static web store. Huggins says: “When a customer placed an order, a member of staff would have to type all the customer, order and credit card details into the sales order processing system. This was time-consuming and therefore costly. With our new web store, it’s an automated process: when a customer places an order, TALENT e-business instantly checks the stock is available, processes the sale and the payment automatically on the back-office systems and confirms the sale to the customer. This saves us a vast amount of time on administration, plus it means we can now track our sales minute-by-minute.”

With retail sales growing, Adnams has also bought TALENT CRM to manage its sales, marketing and customer service operations. This can be used as a stand-alone package, or bought as an integrated extension to the TALENT e-business system. As well as offering the typical CRM functionality, its key advantage is it integrates to sales, accounts and web systems, pulling sales information from these applications in real-time and linking it to the to the appropriate customer’s record on the database.

With the e-business and CRM system, Adnams can now see what each of its customers has bought -- whether via the online store, mail order or in the retail outlets. This can then be used to analyse loyalty, frequency, typical spend, etc. “This sort of information will be valuable in helping us understand more about our customers and be more tailored in our marketing and up-selling,” says Huggins. “It will also help us improve the level of service we offer: we now have a single source of information about our customers that everyone can access and update, helping us respond to queries quickly and efficiently.”

Adnams is already planning a new e-commerce site for its trade customers to be launched in Autumn 2007, which will again be powered by the TALENT e-business system.

Huggins says, “We supply pubs and restaurants in East Anglia and London, as well as our own estate of 80 outlets. The business-to-business site will allow our direct delivery trade to order stock 24 hours a day. It will also include self-service functionality -- customers will be able to track deliveries, review orders, print invoices and much more. This will save us time answering queries, as well as improving service to our customers, giving them instant answers and information when they need it.”

Frank Booty, industry reporter.