Bristol Flying Centre - Sage EPOS
Hereford Cathedral - Opera II EPOS
Coppice Alupack - Opera II
Bristol Flying Centre 
Bristol Flying Centre has become a leading player in the commercial training field, acquiring an international reputation in the aviation industry for its excellent facilities and quality of training. Today, it attracts students from all over the world, mainly through word-of-mouth recommendation.
Download Full Case Study - Bristol Flying Centre pdf
The challenge
Accurate recording of flight information, to closely monitored Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) standards, is essential to the safe, legal and successful operation of the business. Students must clock up a certain number of hours to qualify at every level. Instructors and other professionals, too, need to record their flying hours, while operations staff at Bristol Flying Centre must record every flight and log it against the life-time of the engine of each aircraft used.
Financial Director Michael Black says:
“With an increase in bookings, our previous systems were being stretched to the limit. Furthermore, our customers buy training in the form of a course package, but we operate a pay-as-you-fly policy, so they never have to pay for an entire course upfront. The downside of offering this flexibility was that formerly students were having to wait at the operations desk every time they flew while we checked their accounts."
 The solution
With the help of Sage Business Partner AMA Business Systems Ltd, Bristol Flying Centre installed a Sage retail solution with two touch-screens ‘front-of-house’ for customers’ use. These were linked to a back-office Sage Line 50 Financial Controller. Discussions about the solution began in October 2005.
Michael recalls,
“We knew we wanted something special. For example, we needed totally secure and restricted access that limits what students can do, to ensure accurate invoicing, with CAA auditing being an additional factor. We described our requirements and AMA worked closely with us to develop a solution which perfectly fitted the business.”
The benefits
Successfully implemented on time, the system quickly started delivering the promised benefits to Bristol Flying Centre and its many customers. Today, each customer is issued with a magnetic strip card, produced in-house. This contains their sevendigit CAA identifier which becomes their account number.
Michael comments:
“Our customers want to be in the air as soon as possible. Time on the ground is time wasted! Now customers simply swipe their card through the touch-screen terminal every time they have a lesson or flight. Once a lesson is over, the instructor goes into the system, pulls up the student’s record and updates it. The student then hands over their student card to the instructor to confirm the flight details and charges - this swiftly completes the billing process and ensures that before students do any more training on the simulators or aircraft they become aware of their current account balance.”
Students now have easy access to a comprehensive, up-to-the-minute personal record of the flights they have completed.
Looking Ahead
Bristol Flying Centre is already looking ahead to how it could develop its solution. More touchscreens are planned to give students even quicker access to their account information and flying records. The introduction of mobile, point of sale units is also under way to enable the process of fuel sales uplifted out on the apron.
As Michael sums up
“With AMA’s support, we’ve already amply achieved our initial objectives and our Sage retail solution lends itself to many exciting possibilities for the future.”
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Hereford Cathedral
AMA Business Systems provided the PayPoint Electronic Point of Sale Solution to integrate with Hereford Cathedral's Pegasus Opera Accounting System.
This has allowed for extensive stock management facilities. The PayPoint EPOS Software from Advanced PayPoint Solutions will read product descriptions and price details from the Pegasus Opera linked stock files and will then automatically update the Opera back office accounts system after every sale.
"At the cathedral shop we have hundreds of changing product lines, from badges to Welsh Gold but have never been able to consistently and accurately track the stock.
With most of the staff being here on a voluntary basis, we needed a system that would be simple to operate and which would give us total visibility and control over stock movements. PayPoint was the ideal choice due to its high level of flexibility and its ability to link with our existing stock management system, the fact that orders for PayPoint from Ely, Chichester, Worcester and Salisbury Cathedral have already been placed, reinforced my decision.
We looked at a number of packages such as Bleep 2000 and Sharp, but all required too much bespoke work to create the link to our accounting package, or would mean us having separate systems. As a charitable organisation, cost is obviously an important factor, so the option of a leasing scheme was an added attraction. And we are confident that AMA Business Systems can provide us with all the local support, training and any customisation we may require"
Alison Chambers, Hereford Cathedral Shop Manager
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Coppice Alupack is an independent business specialising in the manufacture of aluminium foil containers and ovenable board containers. It is located in a beautiful valley in South Wales and has the most modern foil container manufacturing plant in Europe.
Following its acquisition of Lawson Mardon Picopac in 1998, and the successful integration of that business into the Blackmill site in South Wales during 1999 / 2000, Coppice has become a significant European producer of aluminium foil containers.
Pegasus Opera was purchased during the early 1990's, which makes Coppice Alupack one of AMA's oldest and most loyal customers.
Coppice now have a 20 User Pegasus Opera II & Opera II Payroll system in use. Like many other customers they also use Opera II XRL reporting. (Opera II XRL is an intuitive addition to the capabilities of Microsoft Excel, and provides powerful and adaptable access to the information within Opera II. Nominal Ledger budgets, price lists and stock adjustments manipulated in Excel can also be written back into Opera II, removing the need to re-key any information.)
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