SPAR UK Limited

SPAR (UK) Limited are our flagship customer – since 1996 we have developed all the software used for CRM, product and deal ma nagement, retail sales analysis, promotions, central invoicing & accounts, wholesaler and depot data systems, and integration with EIS/OLTP data mining tools. 

We have developed three websites for them (and are developing a fourth) as part of their extranet for communicating with suppliers and wholesalers for QA, CRM, central accounting, and statistics.  We redesigned and implemented the network infrastructure, including WANs, remote access, deployment, email, and secure internet access.

Our software is used by more people in SPAR Central Office than any other supplier (except Microsoft).  The database runs at approximately 86Gb in size, loads over 1 million aggregated sales records per week, processes and validates over £680million of transactions per year, and supports in house and web based users.

To give an idea of size, the applications (client and server) consist of over 3,000 source files and 450,000 lines of code.

Testimonial by the SPAR IT Controller

SPAR's IT Controller has been working there for over 15 years and has overseen all aspects of the software development, from both technical and managerial standpoints; he reports to the board of Directors monthly and is responsible for all aspects of IT at Central Office.

The IT Controller has given this testimonial and is available for references by prior arrangement (please contact Zenesis for an introduction):

I have known Zenesis Ltd over the past 15 years and worked closely with them to complete a wide range of software and IT projects covering all aspects of our business.  Zenesis started by producing a template for our IT strategy and designing and implementing a database and software to replace the previous systems with a single unified solution.

We use Zenesis for our software development which ranges from contact management, stock management, sales data systems, promotions, levies bonuses and invoice control, integration with accounts, EDI, customer complaints and our web portal services.

Recently Zenesis have produced our web portal for linking suppliers and RDCs [Regional Distribution Centres] for invoicing, QA specifications, and national stores database.  This is based on their Grasshopper product, each release of which has demonstrated additional savings in development costs and timescales for new applications.

I have no hesitation in recommending Zenesis Ltd (or John Spackman) to any other company.

Software Project Review by Warwick Business School

During the course of the project, Warwick Business School commissioned their Operational Research and Systems division to investigate what makes a successful IT project and what makes one fail; with SPAR’s permission, we volunteered as one of the successful projects.  As it turns out, we were one of only a few successful respondents.  In 1999, one of the researchers who visited SPAR to review the project first hand later wrote us a letter as a reference for our work, in which he says:

I have always been frank about my admiration for your work at SPAR.  I think that you have combined engineering excellence (i.e. use of object orientation, integrity of the model) with business excellence (i.e. an appreciation of business development issues, organisational issues).  Therefore your work should make a contribution to SPAR not just for the lifetime of the contract you have with them, but away and beyond into an unforeseeable future.  [...]  You are as close as anyone I know to balancing the equation: standardisation versus variety.

We continue to provide support and ongoing software development for SPAR.