Midland Super Cream Case Study

The Business Problem

The business had run its orders on the same system for around fifteen years. It had served well, but it was built on technology from around 2007, its original source code and developer were no longer available, and it could not be changed or extended. It had known bugs and unused features, its reports were hard to change, and everyday tasks such as finding a customer meant scrolling through enormous lists. The business needed a modern system it owned and could build on.

The Solution

wildesoft.net started by studying the old system and writing a detailed specification with the office team, agreeing what to keep, what to improve and what to drop. We then built a new web-based order processing system on modern .NET, which Midland Super Cream owns outright.

The system covers the whole day's work. Staff manage accounts, sites and contacts, each account with its own price list and payment terms. Orders are created with fast search-as-you-type boxes, customer discounts are applied automatically, and one click turns an order into a numbered invoice or delivery note. Pick lists let the office balance the vans, credit notes handle returns, and invoices are marked complete once they are in Sage. Invoices, delivery notes and credit notes are produced as PDFs that print on the existing dot matrix printers and are filed automatically in a folder for each customer. Six reports, from pick lists to the daily ledger totals used to enter figures into Sage, replaced the old ones.

A dedicated import tool moved fifteen years of customers, products, prices and paperwork across, after the office had cleaned the data in spreadsheets. Once the system was live, wildesoft.net continued to refine it as the team used it every day.

The Result

Midland Super Cream now runs its orders on a modern system that it owns and that any .NET developer can extend. Orders are quicker to take, prices are always right, the vans are easier to plan and the figures for the accounts can be trusted. More than 130 improvements were delivered over 15 months, from the first specification to the last refinements.

See all case studies for Midland Super Cream