Fell Brewery, based in Cumbria, is on its own journey. Founded in 2013, the independent brewery operates several venues in Kendal, Penrith and Cartmel, as well as two in Manchester.

Started by Tim Bloomer and Andrew Carter, it has grown to a £3.5m turnover business with 50 staff.

Now into its second decade of trading the business recognised the need to professionalise day to day operations and to invest in its ambitious decarbonisation strategy to reduce emissions by 50% in three years.

The company recently appointed a Managing Director, Michael Dixey, and has invested in new sales technology to automate data collection from its venues.

Tim explained: “We needed to grow as a business in terms of our structure, how we manage data and to get insight to help our growth and sustainability strategies. Michael’s appointment coincided with a huge upgrade of point sale systems across all our venues which has accelerated our access to key data. What was lacking was the analytics tools to measure where we are to help us to where we want to be.”

Having previously engaged with Lancaster University on a number of successful projects, the company approached the university about what potential support was available.

Fell was offered a technology internship funded by the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund and delivered by Lancaster University through the Cumbria Accelerator programme in partnership with Enterprising Cumbria and Westmorland and Furness Council. It offered the company access to Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) MBA student Sarmistha Padhi, a consultant with experience in analytics, for 130 hours.

The internship involved an audit of Fell’s technical systems and processes to assess vulnerabilities and a feasibility study to explore alternative technologies or systems.

This found that the company had a huge amount of data available but data analysis software was crude and cumbersome, taking up too much of managers’ time. Sarmistha proposed and developed a tool using Microsoft Power BI, an interactive data visualisation software product for business intelligence.

The project has had an instant impact, broadening the level of analysis and accelerating access to insights which it can turn into opportunities to improve operational efficiency and profitability.

For example, data which used to be manually collected from tills at each venue is now automatically collected, collated and stored on the cloud in real-time. This gives the team a new ability to analyse what is going on at a venue at any given moment. Management can then see the exact data and performance indicators they want, effortlessly.

Tim said: “This has unlocked an incredible level of insight which simply wasn’t there before. For example, we have already used the tool to analyse sales data and tweak the rota at one of our bars to staff it more effectively at the peak times. This will mean more sales and a better experience for customers and staff.

“This visibility will allow us to experiment with new approaches to product discounting and staffing, and know the impact was in terms of profitability in hours almost instantly, giving us evidence to support the decision to roll it out to the other bars.

“While it is early days, the opportunities are clear and I expect us to be reaping the benefits from higher revenues and cost savings immediately.”

Access to Sarmistha’s expertise has accelerated Fell Brewery’s digital transformation journey by months.

Tim explained: “As a small business our resources are finite, and while I am sure developing a competency in Microsoft Power BI would have been possible with training, to have an additional resource devoted to unlocking the opportunities for our business has been incredible. We were blown away by what Sarmistha brought in terms of experience and ideas. We have a fantastic platform to build on.”

The company has been careful to bring its staff along on the transformation journey by articulating the gains of the new software tools and the positive impact on their roles.

Fell’s positive experience of the project has given them confidence in exploring options to upgrade data analysis in production and sustainability.

The company is also in talks with the university about another project with its undergraduates.

Tim said: “The two projects we have partnered with Lancaster University on have achieved very positive outcomes, which is both testament to the quality of the student resource which has been made available to us, combined with our willingness to put a bit of time and energy into supporting them to make sure they get the most of the experience.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK by investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and developing people and skills. For more information, visit UK Shared Prosperity Fund Prospectus.

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