Nichols is the company behind the iconic soft drink Vimto, the recipe for which was created more than 100 years ago in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Having undergone a major restructure in 2004, which saw its Nichols Foods business sold off and its manufacturing and distribution arms outsourced to third parties, the company has narrowed its focus to supplying soft drinks and dispensing systems. It now supplies Vimto, Panda and Sunkist to retail customers across the world, and dispensing systems to pubs and other forms of catering establishments.

Reducing the company’s staff from 850 people to 116 brought big changes to Nichols’ IT provision. Allan Doyle, Nichols’ group IT manager, says the implementation of Sage 1000 business management software in 2007 helped improve efficiency and remove business risk from its IT operations, particularly around customer relationship management (CRM).

What made Nichols install Sage 1000?

We had been looking to implement a CRM solution for some time. We looked at both Sage SalesLogix and Sage ACT but ended up writing our own CRM software because neither of those was suitable ­ ACT was too small for our needs and SalesLogix was too functionally rich.

We originally built our own intranet-based CRM system based on ASP.Net which interfaced with Sage Line 500. But we are not in the business of writing CRM software and I identified the in-house application as a business risk. This is because we had only one developer and though all his knowledge was documented, he was the only person who had that expertise.

Sage 1000 was a perfect replacement for that in-house application ­ it is a fully licensed CRM system which is supported by Sage.

What were you using before?

In the mid-1990s, we were using Tetra Chameleon. We moved to Tetra CS3, and after that we upgraded to Sage Line 500 in 2000, then Sage 1000 in 2007. In those days, CS3 was running on an IBM RS6000 AIX server using Unix and an Informix database. It would be an understatement to say it was a large and clunky beast that needed a lot of effort to change direction.

At about that time, Microsoft’s Windows Server 2000 operating system had just come along, and was getting much better reviews than Windows NT as a stable environment for business systems. In about 2002, we made a leap of faith from using Unix, Informix and 4GL programming languages to new Windows servers running on Intel processors with SQL databases.

What was the advantage of moving to Windows and SQL?

SQL skills were a lot more abundant in the industry and we could do much more with the database because we could do things more quickly.

Prior to this, we were reliant on waiting for 4GL programmers and resellers if we wanted to change direction and move the business forward by doing something different from a software perspective. Now we can write our own intranet applications that interface with the Sage environment.

What applications have you written to interface with Sage?

We have written about 30 applications for our intranet, including application programming interfaces (APIs) and SQL applets.

One is a purchase order requisition system developed with the ASP.Net web application framework, using the SQL back end running on Internet Information Server. This streamlines the system by passing information on goods automatically between our API and the supplier’s API so there is no need to send an invoice to be authorised beforehand.

We have also developed our own internal expenses system which has similar automated authentication functions. This involves emails being sent to the line manager who just clicks on a link to authorise them, then sends them back to the API which raises the purchase invoice.

How many people use the Sage 1000 system and who supports it?

We have a 64-user licence, but following the restructure and acquisitions there are only about 48 people using it at the moment. We may have to bring additional staff online at a later date [Nichols recently purchased a 50 per cent stake in a company called Dayla Liquid Packing, with an option to purchase the remainder in 2011/2012].

We provide frontline support for all Sage applications as well as internal application development, for which we have a specialist Sage applications developer. If we want to pass problems to the second line, we use the supplier, Datel, and Sage itself as a last option.

Besides CRM, what other new features do you use?

We have not fully used the software’s features yet, but we plan to use Sage 1000 front-end dashboards to display workflows for the credit control department.

Rather than run a report to find out who owes the company money and whom they should be chasing, the first thing operatives will see is a screen showing which customers have the biggest or oldest outstanding debt, and directions on what should be done next to manage that debt.

How does it interact with other third-party software applications?

When Nichols carried out its restructuring in 2004, it outsourced its manufacturing and distribution, so somebody else now does the manufacturing resource planning for us, though their software interfaces with our Sage systems.

We deliver sales orders to customers and receive CSV files over a secure FTP link, for example, which contain details about the quantity and type of goods delivered to our warehouse by business partners. No human intervention is required and the APIs do all the work.

What were the other benefits of moving to Sage 1000?

The fact that the software is more modern means there are reduced support and contract fees. We were still paying support to CS3 from when we introduced that in the mid-1990s, and that contributed to half of the support costs for Sage Line 500.
We have also migrated systems and processes from old to new, and we now have a vehicle to do CRM, which we did not have before.

What other IT upgrades have you performed recently?

We are going through an ongoing exercise to tighten up security, but our IT has slipped into fifth gear and is cruising a bit now. We are more focused on projects that improve the business ­ introducing business intelligence processes to the infrastructure to make things run more efficiently.

Nichols employed about 850 people in 2003, but that number is now down to 116 ­ there is no manufacturing and no warehousing operation. We have a centralised shared services department which does all the back-end processing centrally to reduce cost. Our offices are on a local wide area network so we can pass information around so that everybody has access to the Sage system.

How has all this automation affected those in the IT department over the past few years?

I prefer to use the term redeployment rather than redundancy. We used to have a team of 12 or 13 people, most of whom provided network support, but now there are eight people in total ­ including one running the PCs and network, one application developer, another .Net developer who has taken on more of a project management
role, and me.

Some of the IT staff left when parts of the business were sold on, and others were retained under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations (TUPE), but there were some losses.

The IT department now has three functions: the PC network, environment and infrastructure; internal applications including the Sage business systems; and internal and external web development.