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Direct Wines

Where good wine and good service go hand in hand

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Direct Wines Limited, owners of Laithwaites and The Sunday Times Wine Club brands, is the world's largest independent wine specialist, with turnover of over £200 million per annum. In operation for more than 34 years, Direct Wines is also one of the world's largest home delivery wine companies.

Direct Wines serves the drinker who loves wine but who has outgrown the supermarket, which offers mostly branded wines. The company's customers rely on it to provide good quality wines and a great deal of advice in order to purchase the type of wine that is most suitable to their tastes. Wines are delivered by the case, by mail order, on average within three days. Direct Wines' growth has been phenomenal, to the point where the company had amassed a wealth of IT systems to process orders, manage stock and maintain customer databases.

The Problem

The company recognised that its existing systems would not be adequate to handle further growth.

According to Direct Wines IT director, Michael Bennett, “We had acquired new systems as we went along, some packages and some bespoke IT, all on different platforms. There was no consistency of data and this required excessive manual checking. We ran the risk of having data that was not reliable and we could not afford this.”

Bennett says, "Since the customer is becoming more demanding, we needed to know that we could support our customer ordering and service capability. We also wanted the data and systems that would enable us to take more control of suppliers and carriers. Where their own systems do not provide information about orders, we
wanted to be able to oversee the order at any stage of the supply chain process."

The Solution

CIBER was selected to implement an SAP solution providing integration, reliable data, and the ability to grow with a rapidly expanding business. CIBER delivered consultants who were capable of meeting Direct Wines’ requirements, which included tight time-scales and a tight budget. It was CIBER ’s management skills, retail knowledge, and proven methodology that enabled a smooth and cost-efficient integration process.

CIBER successfully implemented a number of SAP Retail modules at Direct Wines, including logistics, materials management, planning, sales and distribution, purchase orders, and warehouse management.

Bennett says, "I do not think I have seen any IT cutover done so well; it was incredibly smooth thanks to lots of planning. We went live close to Christmas, when we do most of our sales, and this smoothness helped us to minimise impact on customer service."

The Choice

After deciding to upgrade its existing systems, Direct Wines examined several key ERP vendors, including SAP, Retek, JDA, Oracle and Fraser Williams.

Bennett explains the difficulties in making a decision. “We are both a retailer and a manufacturer, so that ruled out most choices. SAP was the only vendor with experience in both camps. Even then, we had concerns about SAP's retail experience, so we looked for a reseller with a strong retail heritage to implement it.”

Direct Wines had initially chosen another SAP partner, but after a costly and time-consuming blueprint process, as well as numerous missed deadlines and deliverables, they chose CIBER to handle the implementation process.

Bennett says, “The quality of CIBER 's consultants was one of the deciding factors in their favour when we had to retender. Issues were dealt with quickly and efficiently by them, always to our satisfaction.”

The Benefits

CIBER was able to successfully implement a full-scale ERP and warehouse management solution for Direct Wines at an affordable cost and in record time. Direct Wines has been extremely positive about the benefits the upgrade has provided to the business.

According to Bennett, "We have already achieved more than a 10 percent reduction in stock volumes and have also accelerated stock turns by 15 percent. We have cut costs and improved efficiency in a number of other areas, including bonded warehouse and invoice matching." He continues, “We have single source for all our data and we know that it is reliable and accurate. Users can trust it.”

Bennett concludes by saying, “We are certain that SAP will enable us to continue to grow at a more rapid pace than we would have been able to with our existing systems.”

About CIBER UK

CIBER is a leading SAP consultancy providing world-wide support for a range of high profile clients in the retail sector. We have maintained our reputation as the world's leading SAP Retail implementation partner ever since being the first partner to implement SAP Retail when it was launched in 1996.

CIBER ’s success in the UK has been built on the retail industry’s main priority today: integration of systems, data and processes to provide a seamless retail management and customer experience across multiple channels. Our customers include numerous high profile brand names such as The Big Food Group, B&Q, Direct Wines, Dunelm Mill, French Connection, Goldsmiths, and Halfords.

CIBER is part of CIBER, Inc. (NYSE: CBR), a leading international systems integration consultancy providing superior value-priced services to both private and government sector clients. CIBER’s global delivery services are offered on a project or strategic staffing basis, in both custom and enterprise resource planning (ERP) package environments, and across all technology platforms, operating systems and infrastructures. CIBER serves client businesses from over 60 U.S. offices, 20 European offices and four offices in Asia, operates in 19 countries with More than 8,500 employees, and has an annual revenue of more than in excess of $1 billion million. CIBER is included in the Russell 2000 Index and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index.