Redhill, Surrey-based BML (Office Computers) Ltd provider of systems for wholesale and distribution, has emerged from obscurity after its takeover by Electronic Data Processing Plc (CI No 2,694), and upgraded its system for food and drink wholesalers. When EDP, itself a provider of wholesale and distribution systems, bought BML in June (CI No 2,694) , Computergram was unable even to find out where it was based, but all has now been revealed. The company was set up in 1972, has its headquarters in Redhill and offices in Cheshire and Northern Ireland. Its new software is a version of its existing Charisma suite of programs, which provide telesales, financial accounting and integrated order processing for wholesalers and distributers. It runs under a variety of Unix systems including those from Hewlett-Packard Co, ICL Plc, IBM Corp and Motorola Inc. The food and beverage package provides a number of industry-specific options, including van routing, daily call lists for telesales people, and automatic ordering for regular customers. It also includes batch tracing which enables the allocation of a shelf life and sell-by date to be added to each batch of stock, for tracing and re-call of defective batches. Joint managing director Hugh Doubtfire said that he had sold to EDP to get the backing of a larger company with the resources to spend on research and development. He explained that rapidly increasing demand from customers for new technologies such as bar coding and Electronic Data Interchange required investment that a small company could no longer afford. The combined companies now claim a turnover in excess of ú16m, and expect to spend 11% of sales on research and development this year. EDP group managing director Richard Jowett said the two companies shared the same philosophy, to work in long-term partnership with their customers. Both are in what Jowett sees as a horizontal market, wholesale and distribution, but BML’s customers are small to medium-sized companies while EDP’s are larger. He said that BML would continue to operate as a separate subsidiary for now, since both the company and its Charisma so ftware were names well known to their market. In addition to providing software, BML offers support, training and hardware maintenance and has a customer hotline from its purpose built customer support centre at head office.
