As Yapp Brothers’ business grew, so did the need to modernise its accounting and operations. The company asked Thinc to unlock the potential of its Sage 200 system.
Since making its first sale in 1969, Yapp Brothers has grown to become one of the most celebrated independent wine merchants in the UK. With an initial focus on under-the-radar French regions, the company now imports and sells wines from best-in-class small producers from Spain, Germany, South Africa, Argentina and Australia.
It provides services ranging from next-day delivery services to long-term storage, with a client base ranging from private customers to famous hotels and restaurants such as Claridge’s, The Dorchester and The Fat Duck.
For almost 20 years, Bianca Ford has been part of the Yapp Brothers story. Today, she sits on the board as Director of Operations, overseeing the continuing efficiency and productivity of the business as it grows.
Sage technologies have never been far from Bianca’s side during her career at Yapp Brothers. Initially using Sage 50 and Sage MMS, she recalls the business moving to a more scalable solution in Sage 200, though the new solution was used largely in the same way as its predecessors, limited to core accounting and stock management tasks.
When the business entered a phase of intense growth, it became clear that the old ways of doing things needed to change. The most visible of these was the need for more space. In 2024, Yapp Brothers moved on from its home of 50 years to a new site in Somerset, trebling its warehouse capacity and allowing easier access.
Behind the scenes, however, Bianca was looking at the processes underpinning the company’s performance. She could see that a lot of manual work went into accounting and operations. “One example was our bank accounts,” recalls Bianca. “Our bookkeeper would print off a list in the morning and upload every single entry manually. It could take three-quarters of a day just to do that. So, my first change was to make the download to Sage 200 automatic – as I knew it could do that.”
But the more Bianca and the team dug into it, the more they could see that many of the capabilities of Sage 200 were not being utilised. They reached out to the Sage partner from whom they had bought the system – and found direction and support lacking.
Convinced that there must be more value to be gained, Bianca reached out to Thinc. In our initial discussions we scoped out what the team needed and how they could achieve these in Sage 200.
It was also around this time that the need to upgrade the premises also began to ramp up – a move that would offer the opportunity for greater modernisation within the warehouse.
One of the most impactful expansions of capabilities within the company’s warehouse operations has come with the addition of barcoding technology. Using Sicon’s module for Sage 200, we have given Yapp Brothers the capability to track stock levels in real time and cut time from processes that previously relied on manual data entry.
We’ve also supported the business in cleaning up its database and in automating much of its documentation, ensuring paperwork for customers and suppliers is issued at speed and accurately. Since working with us, the team have been able to automate a whole host of processes, such as managing tax returns via HRMC.
Having unlocked the capabilities of Sage 200, Yapp Brothers is seeing the benefits to efficiency. “Our new site is three times bigger than our old one. But while our capacity has increased, the team size has decreased,” explains Bianca.
“We can now turn over a lot more orders on a daily basis with fewer people. If we have an order of two pallets, in the past we would have needed four people working on this in the office and three people picking. Now it takes one person in the office and two people picking. That’s been a huge improvement.”
This freeing up of resource means there’s now more potential to evolve roles in the business or invest in new capabilities. Moving forward, Yapp Brothers is eyeing continued growth and to further utilise its expanded capacity, for example by achieving bonded status for its storage facilities and to offer fulfilment services for other, smaller companies.
With a supportive partner by its side, and a scalable ERP solution at the core of operations, Yapp Brothers is well positioned for another 50 years of innovation and excellence.
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