Jenkins Bakery has installed CyBake Touch shop management software in all of its 27 shops.
CyBake is used to manage production, recipes, stock control and purchase ordering. The bakery has been using York-based RedBlack Software’s CyBake bakery management system at its head office since 1999.
Based in Llanelli, the independent firm, founded in 1921, employs nearly 300 staff, full- and part-time, at its headquarters in Trostre, Llanelli. Its network of shops stretches from Carmarthen to Bridgend to Ystradgynlais in the north of the area.
CyBake Touch was installed to help it increase sales by getting the correct products into the right shops at the right times. It is hoped that waste will be reduced, keeping all shops within the company’s wastage targets.
Martin Newbury, financial controller at Jenkins Bakery, said: “We produce management accounts, which give shop profitability and production profitability. So a sale out of one is a cost of another. Obviously, they cancel each other out. But it means that we can monitor our shops to see which ones are performing well, which ones aren’t, which ones are losing margin and which ones aren’t."
He described the integration between accounts, production and shop management software as akin to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system where all elements are controllable from one point.
CyBake Touch is used for ordering between head office and Jenkins Bakery’s shops. Shop managers place orders, input waste and stock data and check-in deliveries via their EPOS touch-screens. Head office gets orders, sales, returns and shrinkage data direct from the tills via the web.
“Suppliers are notorious for putting prices up and if you haven’t got it on the system and you don’t know what the price is, it’s an issue,” Newbury said. “Plus, we’re also putting controls in place so that when the shops order things like cans and crisps from external suppliers, that’s all done through CyBake Touch. This then goes into our CyBake system and that then all flows through into our accounting system as well.
“We are a growing business. We have opened two new shops in the last 10 months. A third new shop is in the pipeline. As we’re getting a bit bigger, control is key. If you start losing control and people start ordering products they shouldn’t be ordering, all of a sudden you’re losing your margin, so it is vital to maintain that control.”
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