Customer case study
AML Foods
and SD&A by Zap
Customer case study
AML Foods
and SD&A by Zap
Case study
A. J Wells and SYSPRO
Smarter Insights, Stronger Business:
The data transformation of AML Foods with Sage Data & Analytics
About AML Foods
AML Foods is a publicly traded grocery retailer operating in The Bahamas, with nine locations spanning three islands. In addition to their grocery business, they manage the Domino’s Pizza franchise in the region.
AML Foods is committed to growth and innovation, seeking ways to set themselves apart in a competitive market.
Industry
Food & Beverage
Website
Solution
Want a copy of this case study?
Background
When Davette Lightbourne joined AML Foods as CFO six years ago, she recognized an opportunity to expand the business’s use of data to drive decision-making and unlock additional value. Key information was stored across financial systems, point-of-sale (POS) systems, and logistics software. While these systems supported reliable financial reporting, they also presented a challenge - to consolidate this data and uncover deeper insights into the drivers behind the business’s performance.
“We produced quality financial statements, but we wanted to dig deeper,” Davette explained. “Our goal was to understand the patterns and trends that could help us make smarter decisions and maximize our potential.”
SD&A gave us the competitive edge we needed to outpace our market. From reducing inventory by $5 million to streamlining board pack preparation, Zap’s been a game-changer for AML Foods.
Davette Lightbourne,
Chief Financial Officer, AML Foods
Recognizing the untapped potential of their data, AML Foods decided to take a proactive approach. By deploying Sage Data & Analytics, by Zap, they aimed to leverage technology to modernize operations, streamline processes, and establish a competitive edge in their market.
Challenges faced
AML Foods sought to enhance their ability to make data-driven decisions and improve operational efficiency. One key challenge was the fragmentation of data across multiple systems, which required significant time and effort to compile and analyze.
For example, preparing board materials for quarterly meetings involved a highly manual process. Davette and her team spent up to a week gathering and updating data across various sources to create comprehensive reports and presentations. While the results were thorough, the process consumed valuable time that could be better spent on strategic planning.
Additionally, the company recognized an opportunity to go beyond traditional financial reporting. By integrating and analyzing data from logistics, retail POS, and financial systems, they hoped to gain insights into metrics such as days on hand, inventory turnover, and sales trends. These insights would empower AML Foods to optimize inventory, better understand customer behavior, and respond more proactively to market demands.
Solution outcomes
AML Foods partnered with Zap to unify their data systems and create a centralized platform for reporting and analytics. Starting with Sage 300, they gradually integrated other systems, including POS and logistics applications, to deliver a comprehensive view of the business.
SD&A’s user-friendly platform allowed AML Foods to hit the ground running with minimal disruption.
I’m not a coder or programmer; I’m an accountant. But I could easily follow along in the demos. It wasn’t a huge learning curve, which was really important for me.
Davette Lightbourne,
Chief Financial Officer, AML Foods
-
Consolidated Insights: Unified data sources into a single platform, offering a 360-degree view of operations
-
Automated Reporting: Board pack preparation, which previously took a week, was reduced to minutes by creating automated reports that updated in real-time.
-
Exception-Based Alerts: SD&A enabled proactive management by generating daily alerts for critical issues, such as low inventory levels or operational errors.
-
Inventory Optimization: By analyzing data on days on hand and product movement, AML Foods prioritized fast-moving products, identified items sitting idle, and optimized stock levels across multiple locations.
Outcomes and competitive advantage
AML Foods’ partnership with SD&A transformed their operations, delivering measurable outcomes while establishing a strong competitive edge in the Bahamian retail market:
1. $5 Million Liquidity Boost: By leveraging insights into key metrics such as days on hand and inventory turnover, AML Foods optimized stock levels, reducing inventory by 20% and freeing up $5 million in working capital.
2. Proactive Management: Exception-based reporting allowed the team to transition from reactive problem-solving to proactive decision-making. Automated daily alerts flagged low stock levels and operational issues, ensuring timely action and minimizing disruptions.
3. Streamlined Reporting: Automating board pack preparation reduced the process from one week to minutes. This efficiency freed up significant time for strategic priorities and improved accuracy across reporting.
4. Customer Insights: Enhanced visibility into customer trends and behaviors enabled AML Foods to identify profitable segments, laying the groundwork for loyalty programs and targeted marketing initiatives.
5. Improved Operational Efficiency: Centralizing data from financial, POS, and logistics systems eliminated redundancies, reduced manual tasks, and enabled smarter resource allocation across the business.
We’ve really transitioned into somewhat of an exception-based reporting system. Every day, we get alerts on the exceptions. For example, if there was an error in our inventory receiving, it immediately shoots out to the team. They wake up, and the report is in their inbox.
Davette Lightbourne,
Chief Financial Officer, AML Foods
Through SD&A, AML Foods unified its data and unlocked actionable insights that not only improved efficiency but also provided the agility and foresight needed to remain competitive.
Conclusion
By embracing data as a strategic asset, AML Foods has redefined its approach to operations, using insights to improve efficiency, optimize resources, and gain a competitive advantage.
About
Beavertown Brewery
Beavertown Brewery, based in London, United Kingdom, is a renowned craft beer producer that has carved a niche in the highly competitive beverage industry. With rapid growth in both revenue and workforce, the company has scaled significantly, employing approximately 220 people today.
Known for their innovative approach and high-quality brews, Beavertown continues to thrive, expanding both domestically and internationally.
Industry
Craft Beer, FMCG
Website
Solution
Want a copy of this case study?
Background
As Beavertown transitioned from a small to mid-sized company, the complexities of managing and analysing operational and commercial data began to grow. The brewery’s existing systems, primarily SAP Business One (SAP B1), held valuable transactional information, however, these insights were difficult to extract, leading to inefficiencies. Before adopting Zap Data Hub, reporting relied heavily on manual processes using SQL queries, Excel files, and shared drives, creating bottlenecks and inconsistent data.
Max Smith, Data and Analytics Manager at Beavertown, is part of the D&T team that inherited this fragmented ecosystem. He describes the pre-Zap environment as one where essential business units - such as sales, supply chain, and finance, were often conflicted on key metrics. This led to inefficiencies, with different departments working from isolated versions of the truth, resulting in data misalignment and protracted decision-making.
Challenges faced
The rapid growth of Beavertown’s operations intensified the need for reliable data management. With their small team expanding to over 220 employees, disconnected datasets and outdated reporting methods introduced significant delays, making it harder to keep up with the pace of operations. Beavertown needed to automate manual processes, consolidate data across the organisation, and ensure alignment between departments.
Additionally, critical reports, such as those required for specialist tax reporting, relied on complex SQL queries developed by former employees, creating a technical bottleneck, and a lack of documentation made it difficult for new analysts to work with these queries, increasing the risk of errors and slowing down operations.
Solution outcomes
Beavertown implemented Zap Data Hub to streamline data flows, automate processes, and improve reporting efficiency. During the implementation phase, Max Smith and his team collaborated with Zap’s consultants to train internal modellers—one for each department—on how to create data pipelines and load necessary information into the semantic layer. Over 12 weeks, the core model was built from scratch, meeting Max’s expectations for a pre-Xmas rollout.
Zap’s seamless integration with SAP B1 was instrumental in creating unified metrics that aligned departments. Teams no longer operated in silos; instead, data became accessible through a centralised platform, improving interdepartmental alignment. Beavertown also made extensive use of Zap’s email automation features, enabling reports to be distributed directly without sacrificing the use of Excel, a crucial tool for many staff members.
Zap has unlocked horizontal expertise within Beavertown by enabling each team to generate their own reports, removing the need for intermediaries.
Max Smith,
Data and Analytics Manager, Beavertown Brewery
The introduction of Zap unlocked “horizontal expertise” within the organisation, according to Smith. Rather than relying on a single department for cross-functional reports, each team was empowered to create reports directly related to their area of expertise. This newfound autonomy reduced dependence on intermediaries, improving both efficiency and accuracy.
Conclusion
The implementation of Zap Data Hub has transformed Beavertown Brewery’s approach to data management. The brewery now enjoys improved operational and commercial visibility, faster decision-making, and a reduction in data inconsistencies. With robust data governance, teams can trust the accuracy and integrity of their data, making it impossible to return to the previous fragmented processes. By empowering departments to self-serve their reporting needs, Zap has not only eliminated bottlenecks but also helped foster a culture of data-driven decision-making across the organisation.
Looking ahead, Beavertown sees potential in expanding their use of Zap with deeper Power BI integration, further future-proofing their data strategy as the company grows.
Zap Data Hub provides A. J Wells & Sons with clean, unified and easily accessible reporting between SYSPRO and Power BI.
Industry:
Manufacturing
Website:
Requirements:
Unify reports across different sales inputs and make financial reporting more straightforward to support decision making processes and detect trends
Data Sources:
SYSPRO, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Excel, Power BI
Want to save a copy of this case study?
Background
A. J Wells is a privately-owned, family-controlled business focusing on the design and manufacture of high quality stoves. It also manufactures vitreous enamel products and imports fair trade tiles and pumice chimney. It began in 1972 as a small engineering business on the Isle of Wight and has grown from the original three staff to over 100, now occupying a factory of over 50,000 square feet.
Rob Holgate joined the company in 2019 as head of finance and immediately noted that although the managers’ instincts were good, they needed to be supported by better quality data.
Challenges
A. J Wells had been using SYSPRO for almost a decade and a half and from the manufacturing and planning point of view it was excellent. When Holgate joined the company, however, he noticed some difficulty in getting information out quickly, financial reporting and being able to spot (and substantiate) trends.
"We were previously using Crystal Reports. One of our finance team had learned Crystal inside out and was the only one really who could really build reports. So skills were siloed but also you'd often get a great report built out, but when you needed the same info in an Excel spreadsheet, it could take half a day of reformatting!"
Coupled with the lack of a dedicated financial director, the system wasn’t anywhere as flexible or adaptable as the busines required. Different sales executives were putting information in using different methods so the CRM system didn’t quite agree with the accounting system.
Holgate found Zap Data Hub by Googling. He faced the task, as a new member of staff, of having to tell senior management that their existing systems were not up to scratch and persuading them to spend money on a replacement.
“A. J Wells has been using SYSPRO as its ERP since 2005. They’ve found it works very well from the manufacturing point of view, and planning all your production. Though they did have a challenge in getting financial reporting out quickly, and being able to spot trends. They had a very good gut feeling for the business, but the actual data to back up the gut feeling was always very difficult to get to. I started to look around, we looked at Power BI, connecting the tables, and I just did a Google search for SYSPRO, Power BI and Zap came up!”
Solution
Prior to implementing Zap, Holgate embarked on an in-house data warehouse build, and using his own skill to interrogate the SYSPRO system for financial reports. But he quickly hit a proverbial brick wall, not because of skill but because of the time it was taking. It was then that he called in Zap to bring automation to the process.
“Being able to demonstrate extra information, extra trends that the business had never looked at or viewed before - that was the primer to realising that we need to go with a proper system, and that’s why we ended up with Zap.”
Zap Data Hub quickly built out the data warehouse and integrated all relevant data sources, although Holgate doesn’t regret trying the in-house route first as it did get him into the habit of getting data in and out of any system cleanly and tidily.
The company adoption of Zap Data Hub solved their data management and analytics problems immediately. The result is a better business with high quality information about which parts are yielding the most profit.
"As much as I enjoy building reports and the challenge of doing that, the real challenge is to spend more time looking at the data rather than building the reports! Initially at A. J Wells, it took so much effort to get the right data that people had lost energy by the time it came to interpretation. Or the end user was coming back with small amends which lead whoever had spent three days assembling the data to pulling their hair out!"
“Whereas now, now we can have the data there: it’s good, it’s clean, it’s consistent. It’s on a timely basis. We can actually spend our energies looking at the data, and looking at the trends. And then being able to make the business decisions based on that.”
Benefits
-
A clean view shared by all. Previously if information was needed it was a matter of asking an accountant, who would take days to come back with answers. Information is now available within minutes
-
Better reporting and insights. Previously a high turnover client might be regarded as profitable by default; superior reporting has demonstrated that some of these are, for example, buying only twice a year when there is an offer or discount available, and yielding little profit as a result
-
Data syncs much more quickly and easily than it did when using Microsoft Dynamics and SYSPRO
Partnership highlights
-
$5 Million Liquidity Boost: Inventory optimization unlocked significant working capital.
-
Time Savings: Automation transformed reporting, cutting preparation time dramatically.
-
Seamless Integration: Zap’s onboarding process ensured AML Foods could gradually expand their use of the platform without disruption.
-
Ease of Use: Even without a technical background, the AML team can create custom reports and dashboards independently.