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to process and deploy information from and to the right places, both inside and outside the business, helping merchants make faster, smarter decisions at every step. Let’s look at a few examples.


INFORMATION IN


The quality of information coming into your business in terms of product data is vital. A Cloud ERP system can link up with your PIM (product information management), making implementation faster and ensuring consistent, good quality product data from the start.


Of course, this relies on having good


quality, digital data in the first place, which really does help to speed things up. An ERP system typically holds more detailed product information than a typical PIM, but if the majority of the information can be migrated across automatically, it really does help. If a merchant currently runs its business on an accounts platform like Sage, Xero or QuickBooks, it should be possible to collate that information with relative ease when upgrading to an industry-specific ERP system (and you don’t even have to stop using these specialist accounts packages – just integrate with them and let them do what they’re good at!).


INFORMATION WITHIN THE BUSINESS The primary evolution of ERP within the business lies in the capability and sophistication of the system itself. Industry-specific reporting and analytics functions like detailed length reporting are a huge leap forward and help timber merchants enormously in understanding how and when different stock types are moving through the business, offering unprecedented intelligence for better decision-making.


With remote access to the system possible for an entire workforce, the information across the whole business is more accurate and up-to-date, enabling superior service, procurement planning and availability. For example, advanced transport scheduling functionality can help not only plan your vehicle fleet deployment, it can actually help plan individual vehicle load and routes, making fuel consumption more efficient and environmentally conscious. Automation saves time and effort across all business functions; we recently had a customer comment that the invoicing automation alone was saving three working days every month in time! But automatic alerts can also avoid costly mistakes, drive better credit control and margin protection, and enhance replenishment decision-making. A system that makes it easy to link different processes together will also help reduce wastage and speed up the production and sales process. For example, being able to include milling or finishing instructions


within a sales order, and give instructions on what to do with leftover materials, can be a real time-saver. It helps make all areas of the business more seamlessly integrated so it’s quicker and easier for all the different departments to access the right information at the right time.


And of course, there are plenty of innovations when it comes to technology as well. New merchandising solutions based on consumer psychology can help merchants to plan and optimise the customer journey both in-branch and online, and the advanced stock optimisation capability of a modern ERP system will feed invaluable stock turn and profitability information to help guide merchandising and promotional activity decisions further.


INFORMATION OUT


This is where the opportunities for merchants are really exploding right now. Quite apart from the increasing need for merchants to take advantage of digital marketing options to attract and maintain new customers, as well as enhance customer service, there are many sales opportunities developing right now too.


eCommerce


eCommerce is probably the most obvious of these, as increasing numbers of merchants take advantage of accelerating digital adoption of online selling. Compounded by the pandemic, customer expectations have shifted dramatically and eCommerce is fast becoming a baseline expectation. A good eCommerce site depends heavily on good, current, accurate information coming from the business, and relies on a dependable integration between ERP and eCommerce platform. It is therefore vital that merchants opt for back-office systems with a good level of inter-operability to facilitate those links. With services like Virtualstock able to offer vastly extended product range online thanks to dropship, there are plenty of great opportunities out there for forward-thinking merchants to embrace.


MARKETPLACE


There has been a profusion of marketplace selling options recently too; B&Q has recently announced its own marketplace model to take on the likes of eBay and Amazon, while specialist DIY platform It’s Plane & Simple (see pp35-37) has also launched recently. Again, merchants wanting to capitalise on these opportunities will find it easier with an agile ERP system at the heart of the business.


NEW ROUTES TO MARKET


The online opportunities don’t stop at direct selling, however. More and more sales-related services and platforms are joining the market, offering merchants modern, flexible ways to attract customers. These include NearSt, which helps merchants make more of local markets by enabling listings on Google or Facebook to showcase exactly what’s in stock near the customer, thereby driving more in-branch footfall, or SnapIt, which offers a Deliveroo-style on-demand delivery service for plumbers and other tradespeople in partnership with local merchants. It’s a sure bet that there will be plenty more digital marketing and sales opportunities for merchants as the industry becomes increasingly modernised, driven by both customer expectation and intensifying need for efficiencies and proactive sales-boosting. We’ve already mentioned the links with accounting platforms, but really there is no limit to the external integrations that merchants could embrace.


SO WHAT’S NEXT? The sky’s the limit. We don’t know exactly what other opportunities will appear as the sector continues to innovate, but merchants who embrace digital transformation are in the best possible position to be agile and take advantage of these evolving opportunities. The days of cumbersome, monolithic systems are well and truly over – and the future is looking very exciting for merchanting as a whole. ■


Above: Merchanter facilitates length reporting www.ttjonline.com | July/August 2022 | TTJ


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