One hundred years ago, Bradbury Cheese was created as a cottage industry through the entrepreneurial skills of one Reverend Bradbury, who bought cheeses and then sold them to his parishioners as a sideline to his main role as a preacher.

During a century of business, the company has remained in private hands, through the Bradbury, and more latterly, the Paul family. Today, George Paul is the firm's Managing Director and credited with taking the cheese distributor from an annual turnover of £8 million four years ago, to European wide sales of over £40 million pa.

From its new facility in Buxton, Derbyshire, three times the size of its previous premises, Bradbury Cheese imports and distributes cheeses from Holland, and has Cheddar, Lancashire and Gloucestershire cheeses made to its own recipes under the Bradbury label, and other well known brand names like Bowland, Tewksbury and Pendle Forest, a creamy Lancashire cheese.

The recent revitalisation of Bradbury Cheese has brought rapid growth and a need from the company's management to be able to react more quickly to customer demands and have better control over its stock. Two years ago, an external ERP consultancy company was engaged by Bradbury Cheese to seek out and develop an appropriate ERP system. From a shortlist of six systems, the consultancy and an in-house team selected McGuffie Brunton and a SYSPRO solution.

John Williamson, IT Consultant for Bradbury Cheese, commented: "McGuffie Brunton and SYSPRO seemed to fit our needs, especially in the vital area of product traceability. As a food-based company we have to track and trace our product lines from when they enter our distribution centre, to the moment they are displayed in shops all over Britain."

Last September, Bradbury Cheese went live with a comprehensive and fully integrated SYSPRO suite of modules covering manufacturing, distribution, general accounts and LOT Traceability.  The ERP system has delivered a number of real business benefits since it was implemented, says John Williamson.

He added: "SYSPRO has enabled us to meet stringent customer service levels and we now have so much more control over our stock. In fact, we expect a return on investment through proper stock management alone. Plus, we have more visibility on what we are selling to customers in terms of product lines. Whereas, with the previous system we knew how much we had sold to a customer, but we had no breakdown of how much that customer bought every week and what products they purchased. There is so much more information in SYSPRO compared to the old system."