In a year of dramatic change where digital solutions and a drive towards ecommerce have come to the fore in the sector, Ten-25 Software’s MD Ian Oldrey is reminding merchants of the vital role technology can play in terms of increasing the efficiency of business fundamentals such as fully accurate stock management.
Stocktakes are a real headache. You know it, we know it. We’d like to see the days of closing branches, divvying up the stock across the workforce — who have all had to give up their weekend to help — and manually entering everything into the system, and then updating stock records over the following weeks all banished to history.
Indeed, most merchants already appreciate the need for enhanced stock management whilst more and more are now adopting ‘perpetual stocktake processes’, counting a handful of products each day rather than everything in a dedicated, disruptive period.
This is a big step forward but we wanted to produce a system that would go further; to not only make stock taking itself easier but also to help prioritise which stock should be counted and optimise value across the entire stockholding.
Merchants would surely agree that having a real-time picture of their entire stockholding would great — but that it’s not really achievable, because it is just too time consuming. However, what if your software could do it for you? And do it as accurately as if you were doing it yourself, but in a fraction of the time?
To help, a new ‘Stock Confidence’ metric has been added to Merchanter, Ten-25’s cloud ERP system for merchants (previously known as UT400). Expressed as a percentage, Stock Confidence is basically an accuracy gauge to show how sure the system is that the stockholding figure being displayed is accurate.
Immediately after a physical stocktake, for example, the Stock Confidence rating would be 100%. Over time, that confidence rating will inevitably reduce due to a number of factors such as loss, damage, theft or error. In Merchanter, a complex algorithm has been designed to calculate that erosion level, so you have a good idea which products are most at risk from stock data inaccuracy.
The metric works across both the entire stockholding, and by individual product, so merchants can gauge how accurate the overall figures are as well as knowing which specific products are least definite.
Unlock more value
Overall, the Merchanter product has been designed to help unlock the maximum value from your stockholding by helping to show you where the real value lies, where the opportunities are, and where you might need to take action. Using various metrics like Stock Turn and Stock Confidence, merchants can see at a glance which products are returning the best value, which ones could be working harder, and which represent the best opportunities.
Customers are already feeding back the value they are finding in these insights — and it really does pay to know these figures. For example, Build Supplies’ Mike Tregunna said: “The simplicity and options available to control out stocks will be a gamechanger to our company.”
A merchant’s stock is the beating heart of its business — therefore, excellence in stock optimisation is at the heart of our ERP system. From unlocking hidden value to providing the simplest, yet most accurate, real-time view of your entire stockholding, it goes further to help you build better business.
Being soft-launched at the start of 2020, Ten-25’s cloud ERP system for merchants has been given a New Year rebrand to celebrate its first year in the market. Formerly known as UT400, the browser-based system will now be known as ‘Merchanter’.
For more information and to see an online demo, go to https://www.ten-25.co.uk/ut400-online-demo
Digital transformation is a big theme for merchants across the UK with Covid-19 accelerating the trend significantly. For Cornish builders’ merchants Build Supplies, moving to the cloud for its operations was already on the agenda, and with a brand new 17-acre site just opened and an ecommerce platform launching, the business needed to prepare for the challenges ahead.
The firm was established in 2005 and maintains a focus on “uncomplicated, traditional family business values” whilst wanting to compete with other merchant groups in terms of service and product offering. With its ecommerce soon to go live, Build Supplies needed to update its infrastructure to be able to align the digital front end of the business with the operational back end, and so director Mike Tregunna began the task of selecting a new, cloud-based ERP system.
Mike said: “We needed to improve every area of the business. Operations, logistics, admin, stock management, forecasting — we had to find a new system to help us evolve.”
After a lengthy selection process involving several leading software providers, Build Supplies opted for a brand new, cloud-based system from another family-run business, Ten-25 Software. “We wanted to find the most up to date, browser-based builders’ merchant ERP system to put us on a level playing field with the nationals in terms of technology,” explained Mike.
“It was also important to find an easy and straightforward company to deal with, which offered responsive service and the same family values we have ourselves. Ten-25 ticked all those boxes, and the online demo system convinced us it was the right way to go.”
