Case Studies
The National Forest Adventure Farm near Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire has revolutionised its business over the last two decades, changing from a family run farm to becoming a national leisure venue offering indoor and outdoor fun for all the family.
Maximity has been working with the Adventure Farm since it started to seriously scale-up back in 2011.
The Challenge
Whilst today, the Adventure Farm runs a number of highly sophisticated systems, that wasn’t always the case. When the farm first opened as a leisure venue in 2004, business operations were run with a simple admission system that involved accepting only cash as payment and utilising mobile tills around the site. As a result, when the family needed to install a new till and accounts system, they were venturing into completely new territory, as the business had never used a digital accounts package before. They were recommended to speak to Tracy Pound at Maximity, to utilise her knowledge to get the new system up-and-running, and also provide the team with the training they needed.
Project Management System Installation System Setup Data Analysis Software Integration Sage50 Training Excel Training
The Solution
Tracy employed her years of IT systems and project management experience to get the new system operating correctly, then stayed on as a consultant to train the staff, assist with budgeting and planning and help the management team get the most from the investment. Tracy’s vast experience of using Sage meant that she was able to easily extract the financial data from Sage into Excel to allow it to be included in the regular management reports.
Having such important data at management’s fingertips was essential, as the business was growing fast in many new leisure areas. Over the years, the business went through a huge transformation from farm to leisure attraction, but also a huge digital transformation too, with Maximity helping them advance to the sophisticated systems the business uses today. Back in 2004 there was only a Maize Maze, but since then many more attractions have been added, including a 120-seat restaurant, a shop, a 3000m²indoor playbarn, additional outdoor attractions and annual events. As a result, the business has been completely re-structured, and each separate department is now run as a standalone business centre.
Director, Tom Robinson explains: “As the business has grown, Tracy has offered strategic and valuable advice and helped us manage all the data we now collect. Tracy advises us about data and cyber security, to help us keep our information safe, but she also helps us output and manipulate the data to enable us to use it to make important decisions. As well as assisting the management team, Tracy also helps the managers of the business centres, providing training and helping them review and prepare their data for the management meetings. Tracy and the Maximity team have also helped us by stepping in when we’ve been short staffed and needed help from someone who knew our payroll and other systems well. The Maximity team has certainly been a knowledgeable, flexible and helpful resource to have on board. “At the end of 2019, we’d started to outgrow our existing system infrastructure and needed to upgrade. At the time, we were using a Sage EPOS system, Sage50 accounts and a separate online ticketing system. We realised we needed an all-in-one integrated system, and Tracy helped us by researching the marketplace and shortlisting a number of potential solutions for us to choose our ideal system from.”
Having such important data at management’s fingertips was essential, as the business was growing fast in many new leisure areas. Over the years, the business went through a huge transformation from farm to leisure attraction, but also a huge digital transformation too, with Maximity helping them advance to the sophisticated systems the business uses today. Back in 2004 there was only a Maize Maze, but since then many more attractions have been added, including a 120-seat restaurant, a shop, a 3000m²indoor playbarn, additional outdoor attractions and annual events. As a result, the business has been completely re-structured, and each separate department is now run as a standalone business centre.
Director, Tom Robinson explains: “As the business has grown, Tracy has offered strategic and valuable advice and helped us manage all the data we now collect. Tracy advises us about data and cyber security, to help us keep our information safe, but she also helps us output and manipulate the data to enable us to use it to make important decisions. As well as assisting the management team, Tracy also helps the managers of the business centres, providing training and helping them review and prepare their data for the management meetings. Tracy and the Maximity team have also helped us by stepping in when we’ve been short staffed and needed help from someone who knew our payroll and other systems well. The Maximity team has certainly been a knowledgeable, flexible and helpful resource to have on board. “At the end of 2019, we’d started to outgrow our existing system infrastructure and needed to upgrade. At the time, we were using a Sage EPOS system, Sage50 accounts and a separate online ticketing system. We realised we needed an all-in-one integrated system, and Tracy helped us by researching the marketplace and shortlisting a number of potential solutions for us to choose our ideal system from.”
Business Benefits
The business opted for a software solution called FuseMetrics, which provided all the functionality of the existing systems but with many added benefits such as being better able to deal with stock control of tickets.
Tom explains: “We changed to the new system in July 2020. As with every major change, especially those involving IT, it takes time -but it’s all been very positive. We’ve never had so much control over the business, it’s fantastic! The new system helps us immensely, as we can review all the financial transactions easily now all the data is in one place, included our web sales which feed directly into the FuseMetrics system. We’ve also been able to save some money, as some of the previous systems used to take a percentage of our ticket sales in commission, but these were no longer required once we upgraded our infrastructure. The transition from the old system to the new system has been seamless, and that’s 100% down to having Tracy involved to help project manage and oversee the switch-over.”
Like other leisure and hospitality businesses, the pandemic hit the company hard in 2020, completely closing the farm’s main sources of revenue initially. Whilst these were tough times for the National Forest Adventure Farm, there was a small silver living, as Tom explains: “Although the pandemic had a catastrophic effect, it ironically provided the ideal time to get the new system bedded in whilst the business was quieter. We used the time to transition everything across and test it thoroughly. It would have been harder to do this if we had been testing the new system whilst trying to cope with our usual high visitor numbers!
Upgrading our IT infrastructure has helped us future-proof the business and given it the flexibility it needs to grow. The business can operate so much more efficiently now. We’re so pleased we made the change! And we’re so pleased that we found Maximity! With Tracy’s IT knowledge, project management and training skills, she’s been the ideal person to have around, providing skills that we just don’t have in-house. She’s a key part of our success team.”
Tracy Pound, Managing Director of Maximity says: “Working with the National Forest Adventure Farm has been an ideal partnering situation for Maximity, because we’ve formed such a strong business relationship that we’re almost a part of the organisation. It continues to be an absolute pleasure to work alongside Tom and his team, knowing that we are able to advise and add value because we understand what the business strategically and tactically needs.”
Tom explains: “We changed to the new system in July 2020. As with every major change, especially those involving IT, it takes time -but it’s all been very positive. We’ve never had so much control over the business, it’s fantastic! The new system helps us immensely, as we can review all the financial transactions easily now all the data is in one place, included our web sales which feed directly into the FuseMetrics system. We’ve also been able to save some money, as some of the previous systems used to take a percentage of our ticket sales in commission, but these were no longer required once we upgraded our infrastructure. The transition from the old system to the new system has been seamless, and that’s 100% down to having Tracy involved to help project manage and oversee the switch-over.”
Like other leisure and hospitality businesses, the pandemic hit the company hard in 2020, completely closing the farm’s main sources of revenue initially. Whilst these were tough times for the National Forest Adventure Farm, there was a small silver living, as Tom explains: “Although the pandemic had a catastrophic effect, it ironically provided the ideal time to get the new system bedded in whilst the business was quieter. We used the time to transition everything across and test it thoroughly. It would have been harder to do this if we had been testing the new system whilst trying to cope with our usual high visitor numbers!
Upgrading our IT infrastructure has helped us future-proof the business and given it the flexibility it needs to grow. The business can operate so much more efficiently now. We’re so pleased we made the change! And we’re so pleased that we found Maximity! With Tracy’s IT knowledge, project management and training skills, she’s been the ideal person to have around, providing skills that we just don’t have in-house. She’s a key part of our success team.”
Tracy Pound, Managing Director of Maximity says: “Working with the National Forest Adventure Farm has been an ideal partnering situation for Maximity, because we’ve formed such a strong business relationship that we’re almost a part of the organisation. It continues to be an absolute pleasure to work alongside Tom and his team, knowing that we are able to advise and add value because we understand what the business strategically and tactically needs.”
