F.E. Addlesee & Son: 90 years of records in a modern system, with estimates produced in half the time

F.E. Addlesee & Son had run their business on the same ageing database for years - right up until the computer it lived on could no longer be supported. As a family-run firm of funeral directors in Boston, Lincolnshire, caring for local families since 1930, theirs is a business built on doing things properly and personally - one that had every one of its records tied to a single, ageing office computer.

The firm's funeral records lived in an old Microsoft Access database on a machine that would no longer run a supported version of Windows, leaving the whole system fragile and, in IT terms, out of support. Records could only be found if you knew the deceased's full name - searching by a family member, a place or a date simply wasn't possible. Written estimates weren't always issued, and invoicing depended entirely on one computer nobody could work away from.

They had looked at a large off-the-shelf funeral-management platform, but it did far more than they needed and would have cost thousands every year, indefinitely, to rent.

F.E. Addlesee & Son approached Little Lion Digital for help and advice on options to update their existing system.

The mission was to minimise change and new processes by creating a solution to make managing their business easier, more efficient and maintain continuity. It needed to help them to uphold their business standards and expertise.

When F.E. Addlesee & Son came to us, one thing was crystal clear: the new system had to fit how the team already worked, not force them to change.

We took their existing paper arrangement card - the document they fill in with every family - and made it the backbone of the design, so the system felt familiar from day one.

Once the core system was built, the focus turned to making the day-to-day genuinely easier - estimates and invoicing that took minutes, not a walk to a single fixed computer, and a system the team could rely on from anywhere.

The transformation has given F.E. Addlesee & Son a system that finally keeps pace with how they actually work. Producing an estimate now takes 50% less time - and because the process is quick and reliable, every family is now issued a written estimate as standard, closing a gap that left the business less protected than it should be.

A record that once could only be found by searching a full name now turns up in seconds, searchable by family member, place or date. And because the system runs in a browser, the team is no longer tied to a single office computer - records and invoicing are accessible from anywhere.

Perhaps most importantly, F.E. Addlesee & Son now own their system outright, on modern, supported infrastructure, with all historic records safely carried across and nothing lost in the move.