Barnsley Football Club Testimonial & Case Study

Barnsley F.C., currently play in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. Nicknamed "the Tykes" (as well as The Reds) the club holds a record of having played over 70 seasons in the second division. The Club was founded in 1887 by Reverend Tiverton Preedy, under the name Barnsley St. Peter's and their home ground since 1888 has been Oakwell, now a multi-purpose sports venue.

The name 'Oakwell', originates from the well and oak tree that were on the stadium site when first built, but also generally refers to neighbouring venues which form the breadth of the Clubs facilities. With a capacity of 23,287 in an all-seater stadia, it is often termed a 'classic' football stadium and one of the few remaining grounds to have its floodlights on corner pylons. It was also the first stadium in English football to have a designated stand for disabled supporters.

The club also has a very active charity arm -Reds in the Community- involving supporters and the wider community. In December 2017, it was announced that the majority shareholders - Patrick Cryne and family - had agreed to sell a majority stake in Barnsley Football Club. This was to a consortium involving Chien Lee of New City Capital, Paul Conway of Pacific Media Group, Indian businessman Neerav Parekh and baseball legend Billy Beane. The new consortium holds 80% of the shares and the Cryne family holds 20% of the shares of Barnsley Football club.

As well as looking to enhance the fan experience, the academy and playing squad, the new owners are looking to develop the commercial side. In line with this the club was already looking at the current supporting administration systems, and as the current purchasing format employed was paper based, decided to look for alternatives, that would meet the future business activities expansion.

Finance Director Robert Zuk, led the search for an online purchase order / supplier invoice system that would suit the Club’s needs. With over 200 suppliers, over 100 nominal codes, and 10 main departments, a flexible but customised solution was required. ‘I discovered Cloud B2B online, and immediately liked their approach with regard to making changes to the generic demonstration Purchase to Pay system. Cloud B2B were excellent and tailoring the generic system to our specific requirements.’

Purchase Orders are now an on screen process, with value based approval workflows by department, to ensure purchases are valid, and within budgets set. Supplier invoices are matched to PO’s and when approved the relevant data is extracted as a CSV file for import to the Club’s SAGE accounting system.

Robert Commented:

We took delivery of the system at the end of last year to carry out our own testing and went live in January this year. We can already see the benefits of a much improved procurement process. We believe that this will see us well placed for future development of the Club’.

Barnsley Football Club | Oakwell | Grove Street | Barnsley | S71 1ET
https://www.barnsleyfc.co.uk/