Kipper Sailing is a one-man-one-boat, RYA Registered Sail Cruising School, teaching beginners and those who aspire to skipper a yacht, everything they need to know.
Business owner, John Corden explains his situation and how through coincidence he found Brightpearl
At present I am a one-man band and I focus on providing sailing tuition to private individuals. In the past I had had a successful career in the software industry and I set up Kipper Sailing as I wanted to change my quality of life and my working pattern.
Freedom and flexibility
The business challenge was that I wanted complete flexibility in the way that I ran the business and accessed my business data and systems. As an example, I want to operate my business over the summer months and travel over the winter months. So during winter I could be anywhere in the world – yet I still wanted to be able to log on to my business system and to my website wherever I was, and keep up to date. I wanted a system to give me flexibility and freedom in the way I worked. I needed to be able to be freed from carrying equipment and to get access via an internet café.
Access from anywhere is liberating
I came across Brightpearl, when Chris, one of the founders, attended my sailing course. Over the few days that we sailed together Chris told me more about Brightpearl, and it sounded like it could be the answer to my problems. After visiting the Brightpearl offices and receiving training and support from the team, I deployed the solution and moved my website onto Brightpearl. I use the system for managing customers via the CRM tool, to manage my website and I have just started using it for invoicing. Soon I will deploy the e-commerce module too. In the past I had used Microsoft FrontPage for my website – I could only make changes by carrying around a physical machine which had the FrontPage software on it. I also used Excel Spreadsheets and had data sitting in different places.
Using Brightpearl has freed me completely – to go wherever I want in the world, still able to access my business without needing to take a computer with me. This is incredibly powerful and liberating. Equally, the support I receive from the Brightpearl team is fantastic – they always focus on my business needs and have helped me deliver good business solutions."
