Haldane Fisher says that its “cutting-edge” business intelligence software from Kerridge Commercial Systems enables it to focus on continuous improvement and enhancing its customer service. PBM reports.
For many years, family-run builders’ and timber merchant Haldane Fisher has run K8 — the flagship ERP solution from Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) — as the core business management system to streamline its trading and finance management. As part of its drive for continual improvement, the merchant chose to implement Phocas to integrate with K8, allowing it to operate with “enhanced business intelligence” (BI) and improve the speed and quality of the decision-making across all areas of its operation.
Neal Boomer, Group Finance Director at Haldane Fisher, explained how K8 has successfully driven many developments over the years as the system has grown. He said: “The openness of K8 provided us with the means of becoming one of the first builders’ merchants in Northern Ireland to go live with a fully-functional and integrated ecommerce website, allowing customers to check stock availability across our branch network as and when they need to.”
Michelle McKee, Group Project Accountant at the merchant, highlighted how K8 is an intrinsic part of the business. She revealed: “All transactions are processed through the system, and our staff use it daily for sales, purchasing, finance and stock management. Ultimately, K8 is at the heart of our day-to-day operations and has the capability to store huge amounts of data.”
To further enhance its customer offering and business efficiency, Haldane Fisher wanted to digitally transform and modernise its data management. Consequently, it recognised the benefits of taking the transaction and business data within K8 into the cloud-based BI and analytics solution that is Phocas. Since the successful implementation, Haldane Fisher says it has been able to “transform data access with informative insights that enhance decision-making” for the benefit of the company and its customers.
In practice, Phocas helps the merchant to efficiently analyse large volumes of data. Michelle said: “Phocas is a self-service system that’s fast and easy to use, empowering our staff to find the answers to questions immediately rather than waiting for weekly or monthly reports. This not only increases efficiency but also means staff have objective knowledge in an easily understandable, visual format, to help drive improvement in all areas across the business.”
“Phocas is a self-service system that’s fast and easy to use, empowering our staff to find the answers to questions immediately rather than waiting for weekly or monthly reports.”
Expanding on the benefits Phocas has on making data so readily available and understandable, one of which being that staff can respond and react to it in real-time, Neal added: “As all of the key data elements in K8 feed into Phocas, change can happen quickly throughout all areas of the business. For example, when a sales transaction has been processed, it is quickly available to review by the product, branch, or division and compared easily to budget and prior years.
“The intuitive functionality of Phocas has been key to seeing the application widely adopted throughout the company.”
Indeed, Michelle notes that “All it takes is one click to get your sales data customised to a branch or customer, (and) the combination of speed and flexibility helps staff at all levels make better decisions faster.”
Another improvement is the flexibility to distribute data, with up-to-date reports available to staff at a frequency of their choosing. From daily, to once a week or at month-end, such instinctive functionality creates enormous efficiencies.
In addition, Michelle notes that using K8 and Phocas together offers significant advantages over K8 alone, before mentioning an unexpected benefit. She said: “It’s a very visual piece of software, which makes it easier for you to see anomalies and outliers in a way you couldn’t so easily before.”
Jason Bradshaw, Partner Alliance Manager for Phocas UK, is delighted that Phocas have been able to help Haldane Fisher harness the power of their K8 data. He enthused: “Haldane Fisher has pushed for more of its business data to be accessed within Phocas, so it has one version of the truth across the entire business. We look forward to working with them for many years to come.”
Overall, Kerridge Commercial Systems contends that using K8 and Phocas in tandem means Haldane Fisher now has a more powerful business solution, with the merchant said to be “excited about the future” as it looks to continue to grow and deliver “the outstanding customer service” for which it is renowned.
Click here for more information on Kerridge Commercial Systems’ business intelligence solutions.
A version of this article appeared in the March edition of Professional Builders Merchant. Click here to read the full digital issue online via the PBM website.
