About Us
How It Started
BSimple is only really a new skin on a product that has been in development for the better part of 13 years now. In 2016, the Founder – David Thomas realised very quickly after purchasing a local packaging business servicing the Sunshine Coast that the admin side of packaging was the hardest thing. Somewhere in the first couple months of operation, a vision was born of what and how the packaging company could run, driven by software. David has some significant pieces of the software already in use previously. Still, with a few months of focused attention, it could become something useful to alleviate the admin pain currently felt.
It was some years later, that a coffee roaster who was a customer from the packaging company approached David personally and said – “hey can you build me something like your platform for me?”. It took maybe six months to build a duplicate system (as the customer only had a shoestring budget). Still, once it was up and running, there was suddenly another three coffee roasters approaching David asking for similar systems and assistance.
Suddenly David realised that there was a real gap here, the large incumbents were expensive and very limited in what flexibility they offered. David was forced to stop selling, and undertook a major redevelopment of the system using a unique technique pioneered by Xero, called Slicing. This allowed a complete data structure separation for the entire system, allowed simple spin up’s and drastically reduced the support requirements and overheads of running entirely separate systems.
Post this redevelopment, David has launched the product during COVID19, because software waits for no one right? Since launch, lessons have been learnt, primarily that the market for tailored coffee roasting software is strong and more prominent than the market realises. Recent focuses have been around onboarding tools, to allow for easier importation of Customers, Inventory, Invoices etc. to really streamline the process for the customer. And – here we are today!
About Founder
David Thomas is a sunny coast local, currently living on a little hobby farm in North Arm QLD (Inland from Coolum Beach). Married to Kit, two kids, currently 3yr girl & 4.5yr boy. 2x cows, 1x pig, 1x horse, 1 miniature horse & 1x dog.
You would think that would be enough for David, but he loves working.
In 2016, while completing an Executive MBA at QUT Gardens Point, David saw an ad for a local business. At this stage in life, David has some spare capacity time-wise, so within weeks David had purchased this business under vendor finance, had signed up for accounts with the vital packaging suppliers and was suddenly immersed the world of Packaging and Coffee. David didn’t even drink coffee, just stuck to V’s.
After the first few weeks of grappling with running the company, getting frustrated with supplier order deadlines & getting used to the reality of tying so much cash up inventory, David realised he needs to change this business.
David has a history of Software Development, studying software dev at QUT Gardens point a decade earlier, however never pursuing a career in it – just using it to support his previous business in a technical capacity.
That previous business had a big piece of the Current BSimple platform driving it, so David undertook a significant development project, to bring it up to speed with the specific packaging vertical and the kind of features that a packaging business required. This process was repeated with each new customer until the product refined to a level where customers are onboarding and operation without assistance now.
Our Approach
IT’s all in the name! We love Simplicity; David is obsessed with it. His previous business, Simple Telecom, also featured this name as a core component and culture. There is a real requirement to take the complexity out of technology and empower and enable customers to do whatever they want to with your company as easy and straightforward as possible.
When this comes to Coffee Roasters & Packaging companies, this is boiled down to the following core interactions;
– Payment – make it easy? Credit card, automatic, no fees. Get paid.
– Take orders – any time, any place, mobile-focused. Once introduced to the ordering system customers love the simplicity of placing orders at their leisure and/or on time to meet a delivery deadline
– Engage – regular invitations to order, open opportunities to communicate with your customers via SMS & Email
– Inventory – the only errors that should exist are human ones, and your inventory system should be intuitive, if not AI like automatically known with relatively high confidence the type and quantity of products you need tomorrow.