Finding the perfect cup of coffee is a labour of love for the team at Yahava. It all started when Alex Kok (fondly known as the Koffee Baron) and his wife Mandy, opened a quaint coffee roastery retail store in a small Margaret River vineyard (The Grove), south-western Australia.
The shop served coffee using beans they roasted on-site, with tastings running twice a day. That quickly moved to more intimate and frequent tasting experiences as people came through the store — and before long, they began fulfilling small wholesale orders for cafes, wineries and breweries in the local area.
Fast-forward 20 years and Yahava is like a triple-shot espresso — strong and all about the coffee. They have an online store, a wholesale distribution network, Kwik Koffee drive-thrus and kiosks for those on the run, and, for a full immersion into the world of coffee, tastings, barista courses and a Kafé at Yahava KoffeeWorks stores.
An adventure in every cup
Yahava will travel almost anywhere in the world to find the best Arabica coffee beans — even remote and often difficult-to-access plantations. When they find the right beans, they bring them home, roast them and distribute them to their wholesale customers and retail franchises.
Their aim: to make every cup transport you to a different corner of the world. It’s this drive to match people with the perfect brew — and maybe the constant intoxicating aroma of roasting beans – that has helped the company take the coffee world by storm.
While they’re happy to traipse the more rugged path for the best coffee, behind the scenes should be a different story, says co-director and owner Rob Kinninmont. The old systems were struggling to keep up, and with each franchise using a different system, the business was a little disconnected.
“For new franchises, they’d need to learn four or five different systems to look at sales and reporting. The idea of a franchise is that you all use the same equipment and technology – we needed to move more towards that,” Rob says.
Too much data taking up too much time
Double and triple-handling of data slowing down business
As the years ticked by, and the business got bigger, Yahava’s old systems started causing problems. Despite having most of the functionality they required, data processing times were slow, forcing the team to spend hours on simple administration tasks.
“One of our biggest problems was how long it was taking us to process daily and weekly invoices for sales orders. Some orders we get are 20-30 items, and it would take us forever to manually enter everything.”
- Rob Kinninmont, co-director and owner, Yahava
The more data they put into the system, the slower it got. The only option was to back-up old data to a hard drive, but that didn’t always improve things, and it made running reports in real-time almost impossible.
The company also had no way of tracking finished goods across multiple franchise locations.
“We’d been using the same systems since the business started and we never had any way of improving the speed without removing years of data – and then rebuilding everything,” says Rob.
MYOB Advanced Business the right blend for Yahava
More options that suited the coffee company’s growth
Frustrated and tired of constantly watching the loading bar, it was time for an upgrade. Your systems should make life easier — not harder, Rob says.
At first glance, MYOB Advanced Business ticked all the right boxes.
“We stocktake all our products, including our roasted and ground coffee, and the other systems the franchises were looking at didn’t have the option of doing that,” Rob explains.
It didn’t take them long to realise MYOB Advanced Business could do that — and a whole lot more.
"It links to our online ordering system for our wholesale clients – there were so many more options that suited the way we wanted to grow the business."
Less data entry, more time for customers
Improved processing of large data volume
One of Yahava’s biggest challenges was dealing with an excessive amount of sales and inventory data.
With nine Kwik Koffee franchises across Western Australia, three Yahava KoffeeWorks stores (one in Singapore), an online store and wholesale clients, Rob’s team would spend most of their working day manually entering this information.
With their new system, back-up and processing times are “almost non-existent”, and they’ve saved “hours a week just in man-hours”, cutting data-entry time by at least 50%.
For Rob, this improvement means he can use his staff’s time better.
“I can lock my staff in at certain times of the day to do their role and know they can do it quite comfortably,” he says.
"For me, it’s freed up my time so I can get out and see customers and create more business."
Minimised lost sales and inventory oversupply
Before rolling out MYOB Advanced Business, the company was grappling with their manufacturing process and inventory levels across multiple locations.
Now they have the option of setting par levels, which makes them more efficient at managing their product lines across their stores — and supplying product where the customer demand is.
“We don’t run out of product nearly as much as we used to – you run out in our business and to get more product in can take a little bit of time,” Rob says.
They’ve also integrated their online ordering system called Ordermentum, which speeds up order processing times.
“Now our customers can put in their orders via the app and they upload straight into sales orders – we’ve saved hours a week just in man-hours having to manually enter."
“From a sales perspective, the fact that MYOB Advanced Business is linked to Ordermentum has certainly helped with sales, especially growing products people might not usually buy – kind of like online shopping,” Rob adds.
Continual improvements and efficiencies
Having got the basics sorted, Rob says they can now turn their attention to using as much of the new system as they can.
That means getting visibility of more detailed sales and accounting reporting, something which used to take hours to process — for the simplest of reports.
They’re also looking at ways to give their staff more accountability in their jobs, better visibility of their employee information and taking advantage of the ‘cost of goods sold’ functionality.
“In coffee, the pricing of products goes up every quarter, so it’s something we want to utilise to keep track of our costs and margins,” Rob says.
An espresso look at Yahava
Two decades in the making: first coffee store opened in 2000.
Now an international brand committed to delivering exceptional coffee experiences nationwide, with franchises across Western Australia
Sourced from around the world, Yahava procures arabica beans renowned for their intense flavours and exceptional quality.
MYOB Advanced Business helps company deliver better experiences
Visibility of manufacturing process and inventory levels across multiple locations
Streamlined inventory and sales data from all business entities accessible in one system.
Real-time reporting now being used to drive business performance.
Integrated and automated sales order process cuts admin time in half.
Using staff time better to drive business growth and improve customer experiences.
