LHK Fine Wines uncorks custom CRM/ERP system based on the Netsuite cloud platform

Company explains why Netsuite was chosen over SAP, Microsoft and Salesforce, and describes the advantages the new system has brought to the small business

London-based LHK Fine Wines sells its luxury wares by case or bottle to private and trade buyers. While most customers are in the UK, increasingly it is supplying the US, Asia and South America too. In view of its expanding ambitions as well as the unique logistical and regulatory challenges around selling wine, LHK recently commissioned its own specialised ERP/e-commerce solution called WineSuite on the back of the Netsuite cloud platform.

The new system was developed in partnership with Cheshire-based Netsuite specialist FHL Cloud Solutions, and replaced an on-premise system based on Defacto S5, which was hard to customise and adapt.

Managing director and co-founder of LHK Fine Wines, Scott Hart, who previously worked at Accenture, took Computing through the selection process for the new system.

"I had a preference for a SaaS solution, originating from my own experiences working at Accenture, and specifically within the SaaS CRM capability which provides numerous benefits over on-premise software," Hart said. Among the benefits of cloud was not having to rely on in-house experts to tweak and maintain the system - important for a small business.

Armed with a list of specifications that the new system had to fulfil - which included ERP and e-commerce functionality as well as CRM - Hart and his colleagues embarked on a study of the various cloud-based solutions on the market.

"Salesforce we felt was too CRM-focused and lacked the complete ERP, accounting and logistics functionality we required," he said, while "Microsoft Dynamics CRM was expensive, and again it was too focused just on CRM."

Hart also rejected SAP, on the grounds that its logistics capabilities did not meet LHK's requirements, and also a specialist retail solution by Maginus.

"We knew that this was used by a few other merchants in the trade, however their major issue was how expensive and time-consuming it is to effect changes to the system once initial setup and configuration has been completed," Hart explained.

They finally decided on the Netsuite platform with customisation from solution provider FHL Cloud Solutions.

"The initial cost was not prohibitive, but also probably not the cheapest available in the SaaS market," Hart said. However, FHL provided discounts and other benefits during the implementation, and the system has probably paid for itself already.

"I would say that with the operational efficiencies we have seen to date the system probably began to pay for itself after approximately two years of trading," Hart said.

Among the custom features that FHL Cloud Solutions helped develop were a unique stock-management system for handling rare and expensive wines and a related e-commerce system that allows customers to purchase a specific case of wine. The system also allows LHK to sell stock before it even enters the warehouse and to provide a dedicated "behind-the-scenes" web page from which trade customers can extract feeds for their own web sites.

"The initial configuration took approximately one year," Hart said. "However it is still very much a work in progress, as we continue to develop additional functionality and bespoke processes."

While data security is always a concern, Hart said that as a small company the levels of security afforded by Netsuite are better than LHK could provide, and that it is easier to ensure PCI-DSS compliance. However, he said that ease of use and customisation are the biggest benefits.

"Perhaps the greatest advantage of NetSuite is how easy it is to customise and adapt. While out of the box, it didn't meet our specific requirements, FHL Cloud Computing architected WineSuite, which is highly functional yet simple to use and which meets our needs virtually 100 per cent," he said.