Sector Focus: Software | 41
SUMMARY
■ Ten-25 has taken on more staff ■ Border Merchant Systems celebrated its 30th anniversary
■ Epicor has seen more interest in cloud systems
■ Third party relationships are a key development area for KCS
ECOMMERCE WHEELS SOFTWARE OILS Software systems have proved their worth during the pandemic. Sally Spencer reports
It’s a widely held view that the last 18 months would have been a lot tougher had it not been for communication platforms such as Zoom and Teams, and the ability to shop online. For businesses, the digital revolution has been a life saver.
Software system providers to the timber industry went into overdrive last year, enabling increasingly busy merchants not just to weather the storm but to capitalise on the surge in business created by the DIY/RMI boom. And they adapted their own operations to do so, working with customers remotely. “The whole engagement from sale through to install has been almost completely virtual,” said James Mitchell, managing director UK and Ireland at Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS). “At the moment about 70% of our consultancy and installation work is carried out remotely and I think it will stay that way. It’s a much more flexible, efficient and sustainable way of working.”
It’s a change in practice mirrored by others. “Demos and training are all done remotely now – and it works very well,” said Ian Oldrey, managing director at Ten-25. “A lot more can be achieved and the productivity gains are fantastic. It’s nice to be physically in front of people and see their business as it works, but six hours of training is heavy going. Hour-long, bite-sized chunks are much more digestible and far more valuable.” The benefit of Ten-25’s Merchanter system (formerly known as UT400) is that being cloud-based there is no need to install servers on site or supply specialist hardware. “We set up a version of the system for each client and they access it from a browser,” said Mr Oldrey. He added that a dedicated trainer has just been recruited to help customers get up and running quickly.
“And we are recruiting for three other positions as well – and possibly a fourth. For a business like ours that is quite rapid growth and I think it’s testament to how the new system is selling.”
Border Merchant Systems – which celebrated its recent 30th anniversary with a rebrand – also experienced the benefits of the video conference. “We launched the first of our bi-annual system updates in April,” said Phil Davies, commercial manager. “The biggest difference with the rollout was hosting our first online user meeting. We usually hold a physical user meeting each year and run through system updates and the development roadmap. Being forced to move the meeting online has worked in our favour. We were able to get more customers involved and feedback was really good, so we’ll be sticking with online rollout meetings going forward.” Customers’ needs have changed dramatically over the 18 months and digitalisation and ecommerce, which pre- Covid, would have taken several years to achieve (with the timber sector lagging some way behind other industries) have been widely taken up.
“Due to the long-term nature of the pandemic, we’ve seen many customers become more robust, open-minded and agile as a result,” said Mark Fear, BisTrack territory manager at Epicor Software. “They’ve needed to respond quickly to unforeseen change and have developed new systems and processes to be able to do so.
“Much of that is down to digital transformation, whether that’s opening an online store for the first time, or investing in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools they need to connect seamlessly ►
Above: KCS’s apps take the technology to the job
www.ttjonline.com | July/August 2021 | TTJ
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