Confidence in ‘Best in Breed’ assists New Road to reach full potential and meet growing customer demands

As part of the Budgens Retail group, New Road is a unique forecourt operation located off the A36 in the small village of Codford.  A single site with a strong convenience offer, its business is facilitated by heavy traffic footfall from the main road and a successful gradual trade increase post Budgens transition in 2012. The brand has long-term plans to expand its shop/convenience offering with considerations for further CBE product integration in the future.

With a previous outdated legacy system in place causing confidence concerns around stability, lack of dedicated forecourt supports, ongoing commitment issues and fundamentally distracting the business from boosting its customer experience and bottom line, New Road set about to change its systems to one that would meet its business expectations by delivering unrivalled support, instil confidence in their system and provide access to live, reliable and accurate shop data.

Upon recommendations by business advisors and industry colleagues, New Road partnered with CBE to install a ‘Best in Breed’ specially designed forecourt solution that will assist the business in reaching its full potential and to meet its growing customer demands.

Brendan Smyth, Owner at New Road Forecourt, talks high expectations, the importance of instilling confidence and the need for ongoing, continued support:

“We were completely fed up with our old system, it had changed ownership many times which brought a renewed focus to their business and we felt the level of support for our forecourt business was seriously lacking, we had long wait times to speak with support and we were growing concerned about the stability of its offering. That was when a business advisor stepped in and brought CBE to our attention. With their growing offering within the Budgens estate, we took the recommendations seriously and it wasn’t long before we were convinced that CBE was the partnership we wanted to explore. We had confidence in CBE from the get-go. The whole process went as smoothly as we could have hoped for. We immediately became a priority site for them as they delivered unrivalled support and assistance as we began the migrating process. Our assigned engineer was exceptional, and the team quickly adapted to any set-up and demonstration challenges posed by the pandemic. New Road team members Emma and Ruth brought a collaborative approach putting in the groundwork for a smooth transition by providing CBE with product lists, accounts files, and other information that helps our shop to function. In return, we are benefiting from the live reporting and sales data that helps us to better understand our customers and provider a slicker operation in-store.

It has been challenging, which we expected, given we worked with an old outdated system for so long. Every system has it quirks until you learn what they are and how to get around them and with any computer-based system you will get glitches from time to time but the difference with CBE is that we had full confidence in their ‘Best of Breed’ system (we are not afraid to reboot any more), the process wasn’t as disruptive to our business as we first thought and we appreciate the long-term benefits and outputs that the market-leading system will deliver to the business.

We also made the investment in CBE in preparation for our future plans to expand our offering at New Road and we are looking forward to continuing this journey together. We have very high expectations of CBE, thanks to their market reputation, but so far these have been exceeded!”