Brewing Change

The way DRWakefield booked its coffee trades hadn’t fundamentally changed since the company’s earliest days. Processes that worked perfectly well for a smaller, simpler operation had begun to hold back larger, more complex ones. As volumes rose and the business diversified, the long-standing manual ways of working which had built the company’s success, had started to get in the way.

The team were looking for a way to centralise and streamline their data. Information was fragmented and spreadsheet-driven, scattered across manual processes and difficult to work with. This was making it harder to execute trades efficiently, see what was really happening across the business, and plan for what came next.

After trying some out-of-the-box software, the business discovered that whilst they were able to solve some of their challenges, nothing quite fit the realities of green coffee trading. DRWakefield had their own unique and bespoke requirements that a one-size-fits-all product couldn’t accommodate.

They needed a properly structured way to organise their data, better visibility across operations, and a platform that could support future growth rather than constrain it.

DRWakefield and BCN began by looking at the business and their current processes. Working together to understand how DRWakefield operates, the realities of coffee trading and the workflows the team relied on, BCN were able to ensure they understood the nuances and uniqueness of the business before event looking at the technology.

This was a key reason why the team reached out to BCN, and why the project was a success. An off-the-shelf product means buying 100% of a vendor’s functionality, but only ever using a fraction of it. It tends to mean investing significant configuration effort to bend the rest into shape. BCN took the opposite approach.

Rather than forcing a standard product onto the business, we worked together to design a bespoke, made-to-measure platform built around DRWakefield’s real processes, with a structured relational database at its heart. We replaced scattered, hard-to-use information with a single, reliable foundation. Named for its ability to help the business scale and grow their global operations, DRWakefield called the platform “Atlas.”

Built on Microsoft Azure, Atlas brought DRWakefield’s data into one structured, dependable home. Microsoft Fabric unified the company’s data and provided the structured foundation that had been missing, pulling information from multiple sources into a single, reliable source the whole business could trust.

With the Microsoft Power Platform as the core development environment, BCN built a bespoke application in Microsoft Power Apps. This is the day-to-day interface the team actually works from. Replacing the old spreadsheet-based ways of booking trades, it gave staff an intuitive, purpose-built tool shaped around how DRWakefield really operates.

With reporting delivered through Power BI, the team gained a clear, real-time view of the business that the old approach could never offer, turning organised data into insight they could act on with confidence.

Due to BCN’s Microsoft accreditations, DRWakefield also had access to significant Microsoft funding towards the project cost, reducing CapEx investment and making the business case stronger.

Each piece was chosen to work as one. Azure provided a secure, scalable home that grows with the business; Fabric gave the data the structure and reliability everything else depends on; Power Apps put that data to work in an intuitive tool for the team; and Power BI turned it into clear, confident decision-making for leaders.

In developing Atlas, BCN helped to provide DRWakefield with a fully functional commodity trading and ERP system, a core business platform that replaced spreadsheets and earlier failed SaaS attempts with a single, end-to-end way of working. And because it’s built on the Power Platform, a widely supported, standard Microsoft toolset, it avoids the risk of a “black box” custom build dependent on a single developer. It’s custom-built to DRWakefield’s process, yet maintainable on tooling the wider market understands.

The result was a system that finally matched the business it was built for. It offered more structure, made it easy to gain insight, and is ready to grow with DRWakefield’s ambitions.

DRWakefield has transitioned from a manual, spreadsheet-based operation to a centralised, end-to-end system. This lightened the load of manual tasks, giving staff space to upskill in their roles. Team members who were previously spending their time on repetitive manual work are now developing new skills and stepping into more valuable, more rewarding roles.

Beyond the day-to-day, the business now sees itself far more clearly. With data organised and visible, leaders can make better decisions with more confidence, and spot opportunities that were previously hidden behind manual process.

In short, DRWakefield gained three things at once.

• Easier, more intuitive work for its people
• Clearer visibility for its leaders
• A genuine platform for profitable growth, moving from spreadsheets to a fully functioning ERP system.

The platform DRWakefield and BCN built together is a foundation. It’s designed to scale and to let the business take on more work without the old constraints reappearing.

With a partnership built on trust and genuine understanding, DRWakefield and BCN will continue to develop the platform, building on the visibility and structure now in place to support the next chapter of the company’s growth.