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GRANT & STONE TAKE K8 TO NEW TIMBER BRANCH
Family-run mixed merchant group Grant & Stone has extended the use of the K8 ERP solution to its new timber merchant operation.
L
ast year saw Buckingham-shire based independent mixed merchants Grant & Stone open its first timber merchant in High Wycombe. As the company already uses K8, the ERP solution developed by Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS), across the whole business it was an obvious choice to extend it to the new timber operation. Grant & Stone IT Manager, Dave Oliver, said: “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 has 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 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. Dave Oliver explained: “Because we already order timber by cube and work out to ‘each’ for our other branches, it made sense to continue to work like this across the group.”
Building sales manger 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, said: “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.” BMJ
JT DOVE BRINGS K8 ON BOARD
Builders’ merchant, JT Dove Ltd has made a significant investment in a new ERP system to improve efficiencies and allow for the next phase of growth.
A
ll 19 locations of independent builders merchant JT Dove will be using the K8 ERP
system from Kerridge Commercial Systems’ (KCS) ow that the company has brought the system in for the190 users throughout the group, across the branches and in head office. K8 will allow for better customer service through better support of the team and their daily activities. The decision follows a
rigorous tender process. JT Dove managing director at JT Dove, Steve Robinson, said: “We made the decision to upgrade from our legacy system to improve efficiencies right across the business, in line with our continuing growth. After a detailed review of the ERP market, I have confidence
that this is the right System for JT Dove and that there is no other product with such a depth of advanced functionality for builders merchants.”
K8 is a fully integrated system that comprises financial accounting as well as a suite of apps designed to digitally transform delivery, showroom and warehouse management tasks. These are accessed through the KCS Digital Services gateway that enables users to access, and proactively use, data from their version of K8 on an iOS or Android device.
At JT Dove there will be 60 drivers using the K8 ePOD app that will enable them to access and manage a branch generated electronic manifest with signature capture. KCS’s latest generation digital services will also be used
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to support their digital web development.
New Business Sales Director at KCS, Paula Hayter, said, “JT Dove was looking for an out of the box solution with functionality to support every aspect of its mixed merchant business. K8’s timber and bathroom functionality far surpass that of JT Dove’s legacy system, as well as providing the centralised purchasing for core products and sophisticated rebate management they wanted.
“We know K8 is renowned for its ease of use and I’m delighted that several staff who have worked with it before elsewhere have said how much they are looking forward to using the latest version in their roles at JT Dove.” KCS recently acquired EDP, which developed JT Dove’s
legacy system. Steve Robinson added, “This has given us an extra level of confidence in the implementation, seeing as KCS will be managing both ends of our migration journey.” BMJ
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