Recently we visited Zara at Zara Cakes, to see how going digital with Array has revolutionized the business (and to sample some cake of course!).
We spoke to Zara about the business, which was originally based in her kitchen at home. The bespoke products produced by Zara Cakes became increasingly popular and Zara moved the business into a dedicated premises. She explained how the expansion of the business, and the hiring of nine staff, created its own set of challenges, including mountains of paperwork.
The most pressing issue was that all of the orders for the business were created on paper forms; this made it easy for mistakes to be made. Orders were sometimes missed, or they were incorrect and this wasn’t good for business. Zara Cakes’ operations manager, Jayne Higgins spoke to us about how the business was using Array to change all of this. All orders are now submitted on a digital order form in the Array system; the customer automatically gets a PDF copy of their order and their email address is added to Mail Chimp. The system also updates Zara Cakes’ Google calendar so that they have a comprehensive record of all orders.
"We’re saving a small fortune on duplicate order pads and the biggest advantage is the amount of time we’re saving. I now have every Sunday & most Mondays off work"
Use integrations to automatically make appointments in your calendar based on response data, auto-populate forms with data from Base, or add new contacts to your mailing lists in Mailchimp... all without leaving Array.
“We use Array for all aspects of the business from taking orders to staff administration, stock keeping to end of day reports"
Array is straightforward to use, whatever your technical level
Our trip to Manchester to visit Zara Cakes was a real pleasure; and that was just the free cake samples we were treated to. Of course, it was also great to see how the Array system has helped to make the business more efficient and made life a lot easier for the staff. Now everyone has time to concentrate on what they excel at; making amazing cakes for people to enjoy.
Now Zara is talking about creating a school of Zara Cakes, expanding the business and even writing a book. We’re happy to have helped Zara and the business get to this point, and wish her continued success. We wouldn’t say no to some more cake either!
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