The award recognises the partner judged to have made the fastest, most significant impact on Cin7’s network in the shortest time. Cin7 CEO Sheldon Cummings presented the trophy to Founder and Director Stephen Fewster and Sales Manager Neil Wells, who travelled from Hull to accept it.
Tick9 is one of a small number of UK consultancies that implement both Cin7 and iplicit together for mid-market clients — which made the double recognition at the same ceremony particularly welcome.
Scaling two partner channels at once
Tick9 began reselling both iplicit and Cin7 in spring 2025, shortly after the two vendors announced their own partnership. Rather than build capability gradually, the firm recruited three ERP consultants immediately and trained them on both platforms, then added three iplicit specialists and two project managers.
The team has grown from seven people to 20 inside a year. In the twelve months before the award, Tick9 won 20 Cin7 projects and 16 iplicit projects, with ten clients taking both systems.
“We started reselling both platforms in spring 2025 and made a decision early on not to do it gradually. We hired three ERP consultants straight away and trained them on both products, because we could see the two systems were going to be sold together. Going from seven people to 20 in a year is not comfortable, but it is the reason we can now deliver at the pace clients expect. Winning this, from a base in Hull, against partners many times our size, is a good marker of that.”
Stephen Fewster, Founder and Director, Tick9
Two sessions on the Summit stage
Fewster spoke twice at the Summit. His own session covered artificial intelligence and how mid-market businesses can implement it successfully, drawing on Tick9’s development team, which has been building AI into client systems for five years.
He also joined a panel with Michelle Calkins, Cin7’s Global VP of Partnerships and Alliances, and Josh Fischer, its VP of Product, on how mid-market businesses can size an ERP implementation to what they actually need.
The right-sizing trend: businesses moving off enterprise ERP
Tick9 reports a clear shift in the type of business approaching it. Historically, clients were companies that had outgrown entry-level accounting software such as Sage 50, Xero or QuickBooks. Increasingly, they are established businesses moving in the other direction, off large ERP platforms including NetSuite, SAP Business One and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
The pattern Tick9 sees is consistent. Those systems were often not configured correctly at implementation, so finance and operations teams still do significant manual work in spreadsheets around the edges. The licence and support costs remain regardless.
“The interesting shift is the businesses coming to us from the other direction. Five years ago our clients had outgrown Sage 50 or Xero. Now a good number of them are coming off NetSuite, SAP Business One or Business Central. They were sold something built for a much larger organisation, it was never configured properly, and they are still running month-end in Excel, just with a six-figure licence bill attached. We expect that trend to accelerate.”
Stephen Fewster, Founder and Director, Tick9
Together, iplicit for cloud finance and Cin7 for inventory and manufacturing give a mid-market business full ERP capability at a fraction of the cost of legacy enterprise platforms. Below roughly £5m turnover, Tick9 typically recommends Xero or QuickBooks paired with Cin7, using the standard integration available in the Cin7 marketplace.
What our partners said
“tick9 has grown faster than we expected when we signed them as a partner, and they have done it by investing in consultants rather than salespeople. That shows in the delivery. They understand where iplicit fits for a mid-market finance team, and, just as importantly, they are honest with prospects about where it does not. Breakthrough Partner is exactly the right award for what they have done this year.”
Paula Cooper, Head of Channel, iplicit
“I shared a stage with Steve at the Summit, and it was easy to see why tick9 has done so well. He made the case for sizing an ERP implementation to the business rather than to the ambition, which is exactly the judgement this award is meant to recognise. I have been building Cin7’s partner network since we expanded into the US in 2020, and tick9 is one of the clearest examples I have seen of a partner getting that balance right in their first year with us.”
Michelle Calkins, Global VP of Partnerships and Alliances, Cin7
“Breakthrough Partner recognises real impact delivered fast, in a market we care about deeply. tick9 built genuine capability across two of our most important integrations inside a year, from a base in the UK, which says a lot about how global this opportunity now is. It was a pleasure to hand them the trophy in Denver.”
Sheldon Cummings, CEO, Cin7
Following the iplicit London Roadshow
The win follows Tick9’s role as headline sponsor of the iplicit London Roadshow in May 2026, where Fewster appeared on a panel titled “Fresh Tech for Fresh Produce: How Wholegood Rebuilt Their ERP Stack in Record Time”. He was joined by Paula Cooper, Head of Channel at iplicit; Ghie Berry, Head of EMEA Sales at Cin7; and Tim Hand, Founder and Director of InHand, which provides fractional CFO leadership to Tick9 client Wholegood.
Tick9 increasingly works alongside fractional CFOs and outsourced finance directors, who are often the first to identify that a client has outgrown its systems.
Cin7 Summit 2026, “The Future in Stock”, ran from 10–12 August at The Curtis Hotel in downtown Denver.