Waterside Food Services #makeITMerlin

The latest company to #makeITMerlin is Staffordshire-based Waterside Food Services Limited.

Based in the historic market town of Rugeley, Waterside Food Services is a family-owned food services company with three generations working in the business, supplying frozen, chilled and ambient foods along with a diverse range of catering disposables. Having worked in the sector for many years, the decision was made to form an independent business of their own in 2015, and the business has grown and grown from there with current plans to extend their stores.

Although the company had formed around a Sage 50 accounting package, Waterside recognised that they were reaching a point where a standard accounting package was proving restrictive to the natural growth of the business. Chris Morgan, Waterside’s Managing Director, reached out to Merlin following an original introduction a couple of years earlier and, following a short series of demonstrations, Chris placed an order for Merlin’s core modules along with a number of optional features to manage his delivery route planning and rebates management. Waterside is set to go live in Q1 2020.

Chris Morgan has said about Merlin:

“We were aware of Merlin’s activities in the food and drinks sector for some time and had been monitoring the successes of a much larger food distributor in Nottinghamshire who we know of, who had put Merlin in a couple of years ago; so I was confident that it would be the right match for us. The Merlin team have been great to work with through the sales process and in to the implementation of the project. I’m confident that Merlin will help us work smarter and more effectively, and anticipate that it will help us to increase our sales as we grow our customers.”

Ashley Jones, Merlin’s Sales & Marketing Director comments.

“Chris hit the nail on the head when he said the main decision-making factor was that he really hit it off with the Merlin team as it was important he could get on with the people involved, and it was this that gave him confidence that the software and partnership were right for the future. We are looking forward to taking Chris and his team through the structured and proven PRiME implementation process in the coming weeks and to achieving a successful go-live in the New Year.

For more infromation on Waterside Food Services, visit their website here