Howarth Timber & Building Supplies has selected the KBB Connect pricing and quotation system from Smart Systems for use in all its kitchen showrooms.
14 of Howarth’s 31 depots throughout the country already include extensive showrooms, and the merchant has plans to roll these out to all branches.
Ratinder Sandhu, Howarth’s Kitchen Category Manager, said: “Before the roll-out of KBB Connect, the branches were using either Excel spreadsheets or our existing Kerridge ERP system to produce quotes. This meant a lack of uniformity between branches and difficulties in obtaining management information on margins, number of sales and so on.”
Integration with the existing Kerridge system was essential and KBBConnect was chosen for this ability as well as being “highly recommended by merchants in the industry.”
In each of the 14 Howarth kitchen showrooms, the designs are completed in 2020 Fusion and then passed (with the click of a button) to KBB Connect for pricing. All product codes, pricing and customer details are said to pass seamlessly between the two systems, with no need for manual intervention or any duplication of effort.
The quote produced by KBBConnect shows the margins and thus the “true cost”, which is described as an essential element of any sale for Ratinder and her colleagues. The quote is then either emailed or posted to the customer, and once agreed, is then exported from KBB Connect to the Kerridge ERP system which handles the remainder of the process, including ordering, delivery and accounting.
Ratinder added: “Prior to KBBConnect, quotes could easily take half a day to produce. It now takes half an hour or less to produce an all-encompassing quote for the new kitchen. Also it is extremely flexible. If we want to use a catalogue that is not in the system, we can simply load it in.”
Smart Systems was acquired by leading CAD software developer, ArtiCAD, in 2016. Its portfolio of products includes KBBSmart (CRM/ERP business management), KBBLink (a suppliers’ pricing management solution) and KBBConnect (online quotation and real-time pricing).
