Somerset cider-makers Sheppy’s Cider has been producing its own particular brand of superior traditional English ciders for over 200 years. Widely acclaimed as one of the true masters of fermentation, Sheppy’s has only ever used home-grown or local apples to make some of the finest ciders available.

The 370 acre Three Bridges Farm has been the home of Sheppy since 1917 where three generations of the Sheppy family has weathered the ups and downs of farming and cider-making by embracing change and opportunity.

Quality control has always been central to Sheppy’s cider production and over the years modern technology has been used to assist the completely traditional production process, but never to compromise the excellent quality which is associated with the Sheppy's name.

Sheppy’s originally approached Infoplex in late 2004 for assistance with producing its monthly Excise Duty reports. With recommendations from Infoplex, the decision to change Sheppy’s current accounting software was made and MultiTAS Business Manager Software was chosen, not least because of its ability to extract information with the help of a bespoke report written by the Infoplex team.

At this time, Infoplex also supplied Sheppy’s with Pervasive PSQL to help boost TAS network performance.

MultiTAS lets Sheppy’s Cider produce these reports directly from the sales invoices on TAS accounts, which provides accuracy and audit trails for this very important government return.

In 2009, Sheppy’s took advantage of Infoplex’s innovative OrderBooks software to completely upgrade their information handling. The two big advantages to this relatively small family business were the ability to link OrderBooks directly with existing TAS software, for the management of accounts information, and for its ability to track incoming and outgoing emails. Better information management and sharing was seen as a key efficiency improvement.

Director of Sheppy’s Cider Ltd, Louisa Sheppy said: "For me personally, OrderBooks has become a single point of reference for the up-to-date position with on-going jobs. Storage of emails in and out gives a completely traceable record, which was not available elsewhere at the time. Like so many systems, this one has much that we do not use at present, but we believe that OrderBooks will have much of what we will need in future to grow into."

Mark Ramsay, Managing Director, Infoplex added: "Our work with Sheppy’s Cider is a glowing testament that not only big business can benefit from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, but that businesses of all sizes can. Sheppy’s has proven that Infoplex’s OrderBooks software is flexible and can be systematically tailored to the individual’s needs, regardless of how many or how few employees they may have, whilst allowing room for growth and software additions required at a later date to meet the future demands of the business."

Infoplex is a specialist developer of software solutions for users of TAS Books accounting software, with over 12 years of experience in this area, and is now branching out further with the pioneering OrderBooks technology. TAS Books is the acclaimed user-friendly and highly scalable software range from Sage UK with some 85,000 installations in UK and Ireland.

Infoplex’s SME customers typically cut their admin costs by at least 60%; and take pride in making their businesses over 150% more efficient. They achieve this whilst gaining the confidence of 100% accuracy and the satisfaction of a transformed bottom line.

For further information on Sheppy’s Cider visit www.sheppyscider.com