Mr Black Case Study
The Problem
Mr Black is a business founded around the Australian obsession with coffee. Their underlying mission is to bring that infamous Aussie coffee culture to bars and clubs through a truly unique product – Premium Coffee Liqueur. Cloudsolve first came to work with Tom Baker, the self-confessed coffee snob and Founder, when they were a small team without the tools they needed for success.
After an initial and sadly unsuccessful attempt to get the systems in place with an inexperienced consultant, Tom found himself with a product growing in popularity and demand and the wrong software to manage it. Without the right systems and processes to handle their accounts, their manufacturing and distribution, they just weren’t able to stay on top of things. That’s where Cloudsolve came in.
The Solution
The first step was to fix the immediate problem of the accounting set up, then utilise our expertise with Cloud based systems to improve the operational side of the business.
We deployed Xero to handle the financial needs of the business and Unleashed, a consumer level inventory management system that worked in conjunction with Xero, to handle inventory management. These two products fundamentally changed their business operations. “Our business is far more efficient which has contributed enormously to our growth” says Tom.
Providing the team with accurate, real-time information to ensure that bills, suppliers and payroll were processed, cashflow forecasts could be prepared and stock could be managed, tracked and distributed with ease. This, in turn, enabled Tom to work on the business and not in the business.
The Transformation
It’s been 8 years now that we’ve worked together and Mr Black has grown from a boutique operation into an international superstar. In this time we have watched their revenue grow and expand across the globe into notoriously challenging markets like America, where they are now the Number 1 selling Australian spirit across 17 US states. As much as we’d like to claim responsibility for that growth, we can’t, that’s all the vision, dedication and commitment of Tom and his team. We are simply enablers. We set up their systems and processes to enable the brains of the business to fly.
