The Cambridge Satchel Company

In 2008, Julie Deane and her mother Freda started The Cambridge Satchel Company at their kitchen table in Cambridge with a budget of only £600. Since these humble beginnings the company has been on an unstoppable journey to success, culminating in a collaboration with British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, an OBE for Julie, the opening of a flagship store in Covent Garden and the brand being adopted by celebrities including Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. 

The challenge

This success has not come without its challenges and faced with the need to streamline production planning to maintain efficiency in purchasing, planning and production, Cambridge Satchel started researching software platforms that would enable the company to manage the entire production process. Following extensive research, Cambridge Satchel identified Odoo as the ideal solution. A relative newcomer to the enterprise software market, Odoo is sending shock waves through the industry and displacing the established names such as Sage, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics by offering better customisation, better integration and ultimately better value for money to organisations of all shapes and sizes. 

The solution

While Odoo sits in very familiar market segments such as ERP, CRM and so on, the way it has developed is anything but typical. Its strong technical foundations – its source code – are open for literally thousands of developers and business process experts to build on. This means that rather than business processes being constrained by the capabilities of the software, the systems can be developed to exactly fit the operations. 

Once the platform had been identified, the next task for The Cambridge Satchel Company was to find the right business partner to develop the software and deliver the bespoke solutions required. This proved an easier than anticipated process. Smart Information Technologies Ltd is the UK’s leading Odoo solutions provider in terms of experience and capabilities. Smart IT has more than seven years’ experience with Odoo and a customer base across many UK industry sectors. 

Based near Preston, the Smart IT team has proven extensive experience and knowledge of Odoo to transform business processes, efficiency and productivity of clients whether they’re looking for just one module or a whole suite of integrated applications and this fitted with the immediate needs of Cambridge Satchel. 

“The Odoo ERP system overhauled The Cambridge Satchel Company's operations thanks to Smart IT."

Mark Fitzpatrick • The Cambridge Satchel Company

The results

The solution developed by Smart IT streamlined the existing manual systems enabling the production process to deal with varying lead times from global suppliers and match stock requirements, purchasing and production schedules to meet ever more challenging deadlines and customer expectations. Created by an internal development team of specialists chosen from the company’s extensive, directly employed Lancashire based talent pool. The project was delivered in under 7 months and has resulted in significant efficiencies in the business. This in turn has helped cash flow and reduced the amount of stockholding whilst reducing overall manufacturing lead times. It has also provided a solid foundation to integrate other business systems into one, world class platform, Odoo.