INTERVIEW: James Butcher, S4RB – ‘We deliver – with pride’
TheBusinessDesk.com spoke to James Butcher, director at Nottingham-based S4RB, which creates and manages software that bridge the gap between suppliers, retailers and the customer.
Butcher has worked with some of the world’s largest retailers and brands, S4RB’s clients include Asda, Musgrave Group, Safeway, Waitrose, Walgreens Boots Alliance and Walmart.
Here, he tells us about the importance of teamwork in building a brand.
Can you give me a brief run-through of your career so far?
An engineer with a major in software, I cut my teeth as a software developer and then project engineer. My career has always been in Nottingham and I began in the pharmaceutical industry, initially installing manufacturing automation at Boots before moving into the food industry. Working at Prestek, we won Nottinghamshire Company of the Year and I then went on to become global product manager for Markem Technologies. In three years we achieved an estimated 70 per cent worldwide market share.
In 1999 I founded Claricom. Based at Nottingham Science Park, Claricom was an innovative company that created software to eliminate product and package coding errors. The software helped to save manufacturers and retailers money, as well as reducing food and packaging waste. We were soon Smart Award winners and developed a market leading position with worldwide recognition, prior to a trade sale in 2008.
After 15 years in the food industry working with national manufacturers and local companies such as Pork Farms, the latter years of Claricom was our first exposure to the retailers. We were working with Tesco, Asda and M&S on compliance and quality around their private brands. Little did I know at the time, this would set the context for my involvement in Solutions 4 Retail Brands (S4RB).
S4RB was formed in 2006 as a consultancy business, providing specialist services to private brand retailers with customers such as Asda in the UK and their parent company Walmart in the US. The founders, Jan Fura and Kieran Forsey, had extensive experience working with the world’s largest retailers, and industry specialise solution providers. With my own background working with suppliers to private brands, we identified the opportunity to deliver value for retailers around supplier engagement; a set of cloud-based tools to help retailers better achieve success with private brands. I joined S4RB in 2010 as managing director and have led the transformation from consultancy to innovative software solutions, whilst retaining the consultancy led approach to ensure solutions deliver for clients.
To what do you attribute your success?
My success can be split into two parts: my father ran his own engineering business, which gave me a solid practical background. I also owe a lot to my first boss at Prestek, Steve Buckby, who built upon this and helped my transition first to product management, and then a more commercial role. I think this engineering background has been pivotal to my success since it provides a solid grounding to the solutions we still offer today. I attribute my own success to that blend of commercial and technical understanding that delivers solutions that make pragmatic and commercial sense.
The second is the team. I have always been fortunate enough to bring together and work with a great group of people. That is the case again here at S4RB. Our program director, Mark Fowkes, worked with me at Claricom and was my first key recruitment at S4RB. Together, we have built a team that really believe in our offer.
What are your views on the how the government is helping your industry? Is it doing enough? What more could it do?
As I said previously, I attribute my own success to a practical engineering background, although I haven’t actually been ‘an engineer’ for 20 years. I believe the practical skills, reasoning and problem solving I gained as a result are valuable in all walks of life and the government could do more to promote and support engineering.
That said, I do feel there is a lot of support for local business. The Business Growth Service was a great scheme and it is disappointing that it has come to an end. It will be interesting to see what replaces it. Hopefully an alternative initiative will be launched soon.
Finance is always a challenge, especially with growth businesses such as our own. We were fortunate to win support from the N’Tech (Nottingham Technology Growth Fund) that helped us to accelerate product development (which included new job creation here in Nottingham) and win new customers. It is unfortunate that InnovateUK is not more supportive of such development programmes and it would be good to see more access to growth finance, especially to support technical development and export.
How do you plan to grow your business?
We believe that our success comes from delivering for our customers. We provide innovative solutions and help to take problems away for customers, but most importantly we ‘do what it says on the tin’. We deliver, and pride ourselves on doing so. Therefore, whilst marketing is important to us, as it is for any business, we grow through referrals and recommendations. This is from customer to customer, but also within a business. For example, if we do a good job for the Compliance team, they will refer us to the Quality department, if we deliver savings for the Private Brand team, we might then work with Sustainability or Responsible Sourcing, and so on.
How important is the relationship between suppliers and retailers?
We work with retailers on all sorts of challenges but primarily it is private brand retailers – the retailers’ own brands. For these retailers we believe it is essential for them to view their suppliers as part of the same team. At S4RB, we use the expression ‘one team’.
A retailer once explained that it was limited by a quality department of just nine people. However, they had over 500 private brand suppliers, each with their own quality manager. That meant if supplier engagement was done correctly, the retailer wouldn’t only have nine managers, they would potentially have 509 all aligned around one goal of a successful private brand. Another retailer explained how their technical team of 30-plus technical managers spent 80 per cent of their time chasing suppliers.
Successful supplier engagement is built around pillars of communication, transparency and support. If this is done effectively it means that the supplier will be able to reach its goals quicker and get more right first time. This results in the retailer selling more, or launching more products, or perhaps having fewer complaints, all of which is beneficial to the supplier. What is more, instead of chasing suppliers, the technical managers can then focus their time on the next generation of products or innovative packaging etc.
There are a lot of supplier performance management tools or supplier relationship management techniques. These tend to focus on how to get the most out of your suppliers and concentrate on key suppliers. In the right context, these are indeed useful.
Supplier engagement, however, is different. It is not how to get the most out of your suppliers, but how to enable and empower them to deliver so that you both get the best results, and ultimately, the customer gets the ideal product. It is about working together so that these private brands can successfully deliver consistent value for the customer.
OUT OF OFFICE
How old are you? 47
Do you have family? I’m married with two teenage children and I live in the Vale of Belvoir.
What are your main hobbies/interests? I’m a very keen rugby fan and have a season ticket for the Leicester Tigers. I’m also a player sponsor for a Nottingham Rugby Academy player, James Newman, who has now made it into the England U18 squad, as well as coaching and refereeing part-time for junior rugby.
Favourite film? Not an obvious one! The old John Wayne/Maureen O’Hara movie ‘The Quiet Man’.
Favourite book? Painted House by John Grisham.
Who inspires you most? Former English rugby union prop Matt Hampson who was left tetraplegic after a scrimmaging accident at just 20 years old. He has gone on to raise incredible amounts of money and awareness of spinal injuries.
Tell me something random about yourself. I’m an engineer – I don’t do random!
How many cups of coffee do you drink a day? Actually, I’m not a big coffee drinker but I’ll never turn down a proper strong cup of builder’s tea. I’m also a big real ale fan, which makes working next to the Castle Rock Brewery and The Vat & Fiddle pub ideal.
What’s your favourite local restaurant? It would have to be Laguna. The owner-manager, Tony, welcomed me to Nottingham in 1990 and still personally runs what I feel is one of the best curry houses not just in Nottingham, but in the country.
