Technology: Buying made simple

Hardys & Hansons' new electronic order-to-payment system aims to transform pub purchasing.Nottingham brewer Hardys & Hansons is pioneering a...

Hardys & Hansons' new electronic order-to-payment system aims to transform pub purchasing.

Nottingham brewer Hardys & Hansons is pioneering a complete order-to-payment online e-commerce system across its managed estate. By next January pub managers at every one of its 72 houses will be placing orders over the internet and receiving and sending electronic documentation throughout the whole purchase process.

With orders automatically checked, Hardys & Hansons' IT manager David Cook believes the system will not only save time and money but eliminate many of the inevitable errors that occur in a pub estate that carries out around 40,000 transactions a year.

"It will improve the process and make checking invoices easy," he explains. "Possible errors will be highlighted automatically and we won't be shuffling around bits of paper like we do now."

There are also plans to link the system - called TradeSimple - to the Zonal EPoS system in pubs which already automatically produce suggested orders for the managers based on sales through the tills and stock levels.

It will mean that licensees will only have to check the suggestions, amend them to take promotions into account and so forth, before clicking through their order.

Another bonus for the brewer is that it will free up telesales staff to do more selling to the freetrade rather than purely taking orders.

The system has been on trial for wet sales between one pub and the brewery itself for the past two months. The first outside supplier to take part, in a test to run from this month, will be Holdsworth, which distributes food to all 52 of Hardys & Hansons food pubs. It will have its own back-office systems integrated with TradeSimple.

The roll-out will be extended to four or five other key suppliers and Hardys & Hansons' entire managed estate.

"The pub managers we have spoken to about the system see it as being a benefit to them," says David. "At the moment a supplier might ring through at midday and the manager might be tied up on the phone for half-an-hour at what is a busy time. With TradeSimple they can do it online at 2am in the morning if they want to, although we shall give them a deadline.

"It's also good for the suppliers because we can control orders. There will be no nipping out to the supermarket because the manager has forgotten to buy something."

Pictured: David Cook says the TradeSimple purchase system allows pub managers to check orders and invoices.

The TradeSimple trail

EPoS in the pub suggests order based on sales and stocks
Suggested order appears in TradeSimple
Manager confirms order
TradeSimple confirms order has been made
Goods arrive
Manager receives electronic delivery note on TradeSimple
Delivery is posted on EPoS system
Manager sends "goods received" note
Invoice is raised and TradeSimple sends it straight to head office for payment.

System claims to cut back on errors

TradeSimple has been developed over the past few years by Oxfordshire-based IT company ABS, which claims to have been the first to introduce web-based ordering in the UK.

It has already proved successful in other industry sectors including furniture retail and motor parts distribution.

ABS business development manager Keith Hufton, who was involved in the abortive Grey Archer initiative to bring e-commerce to Unique Pub Company lessees, believes the time has come for the hospitality sector to embrace the technology.

"The opportunity is there to transform a paper-strewn error-prone process into an electronic system," he says. "Grey Archer failed because the tenants simply didn't use it. The reason for that was there was no confirmation of the order and they lacked confidence in the process.

"If you are going to get people to use electronic purchasing you have to inform them at every stage who's buying what and where it is in the system."

That's exactly what Keith hopes TradeSimple brings to the trade. "There are other systems that stop at the purchase order. We go beyond - purchase order acknowledgement, delivery note, invoice, 'goods received' note, it's all automated."

Perhaps the most striking claim the system makes is that it can cut down the errors that are endemic in traditional purchasing.

Keith estimates that because of errors 15 to 20 per cent of transactions in the catering sector produce a credit note. Even the perfectly raised invoice costs £35 to process, he says, rising to £75 for invoices that bounce back with a query, whether it's because it involves the wrong product, wrong price or wrong quantity.

Thirty per cent of invoices are wrong, bringing the average cost to about £50. TradeSimple, says Keith, can do it for 25p per invoice.

The other challenge for web-based purchasing is to integrate with the suppliers' various systems. TradeSimple is designed to do that, too, and it can work with email or even fax if back-office systems cannot be fully integrated.

As well as Hardys & Hansons, Laurel Pub Company is already using a more limited version, of TradeSimple, automatically matching orders to invoice to goods received across 24 suppliers.