Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) has announced it has supplied Grant & Stone’s new timber operation with K8, its ERP solution, meaning the software is being used across the whole of Grant & Stone’s business.
Grant & Stone was set up in 1987 and reports that 50% of the business’s turnover is made up from its builders’ merchants operation, with the remainder from the supply of plumbing and electrical materials.
There are 29 branches in total, the newest being Grant & Stone’s first timber merchant, which opened last year in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
IT Manager, Dave Oliver, explained: “Since implementing K8 two years ago, we now have the accuracy and transparency we were looking for. Booking in and out is now so much better controlled and being a cloud based solution means we have the security of a complete disaster recovery service. Using the OMR (Order Margin Review) in particular is helping us to be more profitable. It’s also integrated our sales and financial accounting, which is really good as everything is in one place.”
Grant & Stone have PI (perpetual inventory) set up in all branches so the team knows on a daily basis what the stock position is. At the new timber branch, the company has also been able to make the most of the manufacturing functionality within K8 to enable them to put accurate charges, and therefore, extra profit against a number of processes in the mill such as cutting and planning. K8 also maintains the integrity of chain of custody throughout the supply chain, reporting on where the timber is or what it’s been converted to.
K8 also has the flexibility to manage stock to tally, sell only full packs, sell loose lengths to tally or, as at Grant & Stone, to import in tally but convert to lengths.
Building Sales Manager, Alan Kent, added: “We’re also planning to use the CRM function within K8. We’ve talked about this a lot, and I see it as a massive benefit. We can give our salesmen tasks, see what customers they’ve called on and what they’ve quoted when they were there.”
Building Director, Mat Miller, concluded: “Importing is something that interests me and I’m starting to look at the import functionality within K8. We’re also interested in the suite of apps available from KCS. Picking timber can be complicated because of all the manual handling involved and the ePick app, which you can use on a mobile phone in the yard, sounds very attractive. We’ve got a fleet of 60 vehicles so we’re also planning to look at the ePOD app so our drivers can manage deliveries and capture signatures on a mobile phone. That will save us a lot of filing.”
For more information on KCS, visit www.kerridgecs.com.
