Your business. Your way.
Case Study:
Bonus Electrical is the wholesaling division of the East Yorkshire based, family owned, Bonus Electrical group. Established nearly 60 years ago, the group also owns an electrical retail superstore, a solar P.V. distribution company, and supplies electrical kits to caravan and mobile home manufacturers. Bonus Electrical is the largest independent wholesaler in Hull and a key supplier to local health authorities, councils, schools, colleges, contractors and industry.
Company spokesperson, Carl Dearing, said, “Unlike national wholesaling groups, who have very strict rules, Bonus is extremely flexible. We can do things for customers that no one else can. Where local competitors may have one or two vehicles and offer a next day delivery service, we offer a shuttle service using a large fleet of vans. If we have what customers want in stock, the average delivery time is 90 minutes.” Bonus also offers its major customers a free call out service during evenings and weekends, the facility for stock holding, and warehousing for a council home maintenance company - with whom they have just renewed a three-year supply contract.
In 2013 the Bonus management team was given the remit to double the turnover in two years and to make the business more profitable.
At the time they were using what was described as ‘an antiquated, character based system that was always crashing’ and, although they realised the old system hadn’t got the capability to produce the reports they needed, a change of system was considered too disruptive. However when it became clear that the old system was collapsing, the search for a new solution began.
The brief Bonus eventually gave to KCS, and two other software providers, was for a system that would give the company all the business intelligence they needed in a format that was usable and accurate. It was also made clear that staff should be able to use the system competently as soon as it went live. “We were confident all three systems could do what Bonus wanted,” said Carl, “but we ultimately chose K8 because of the attitude of the KCS salesperson. He really listened to all our concerns and we felt he genuinely understood them. The level of commitment Bonus received from him, which extended far beyond the closure of the sale, was outstanding.
The fact KCS had implemented systems for other electrical wholesalers, whereas the other providers hadn’t, also gave us comfort. The frustrations we expected when the system went live never happened. There was some fire fighting during the first six months over printer interfaces and a snagging list that we worked through with KCS, but we never stopped trading or lost any business.”
Being able to send out invoices by email delivered the first immediate cost and time saving benefits. And, on the trade counter, staff were now able to access accurate pricing which speeded up service straight away. The internal sales team were also able to access the customer history they needed more quickly and easily.
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Staff were now able to access accurate pricing which speeded up service straight away.
Bonus’ Jamie Dawson, said, “The integrated POD system is invaluable and helps us deal with queries quickly and more efficiently. Some of our local authority customers ask for a lot of PODs and I often used to spend half a day wading through files and scanning paper copies for emailing.”
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