NEWS EXTRA CONFERENCE
“We all have dashboards, daily reports, weekly reports, monthly reporting packages, but these need to be relevant and able to drive the right behaviour. It’s a constant battle to make sure that we are consistent in what we report and that it is being used and having an impact on our performance.”
Marketing is a really important part of what Bradfords does, Young said. “In the last 10 years we have really upped our game in terms of marketing. We invest heavily in the local community, as well as sponsoring Exeter Rugby club. We advertise across all channels, on tv, radio, and we have a website that is there to drive traffic into our stores.” Another key to growth is getting the basics of range and depth of stock offering right. “This is often misunderstood. A few years ago, with 30 branches we had only 120 products that were identical across every store. Fast forward to now and through consistent range management we now have thousands of identical products. This consistency has allowed our category management team to be more focussed on performance, growth and improving the quality of data across all our channels.” He pointed out that Screwfix for example, has 11,500 identical products in every single branch; with a further 20,000 SKUs available next day.
The key for Bradfords is staying relevant by being able to adapt to changes. “Take sustainability for example,” Young said. “It’s been a real buzz word in the industry for the last five years, yet few of us have really got to grips with it. Much of the action around sustainability s focused around our own businesses, keeping a check on our carbon footprint, however, the big opportunities is in selling high-spec better quality product creating better homes within the communities we serve. “At Bradfords we’ve been driving this agenda via our Building Sustainable Communities Initiative for three years, and we are slowly getting the more forward-thinking customers on board but we still have a way to go. There is a huge opportunity with retrofit and government policy hasn’t really supported that. April saw the expansion of biodiversity net gain rules adding another burden for businesses. “Environmental change is here to stay, management of water is going to be key in the months and years ahead. Much like there has been a huge drive to insulate homes there is a need to protect homes from extreme weather conditions.
“Global warming means record rainfall and record temperatures and they are here to stay. We can react to this and being huge benefits but we need to work on our skill sets.” Basic things, executed well provide a firm platform for growth, Young said. “The days of winging it are gone. Competitors are better, more organised and in many cases better funded than they ever have been so if you are going to invade someone else’s territory you need to be at the top of your game.” BMJ
10
COLLABORATION IS KEY NMBS commercial
director Andy Hextall looked at some of the NMBS’ current initiatives.
“THE THEME OF One Industry was chosen to highlight how using collaboration can help to drive the building materials sector. going forwards. Despite us all being our one independent business our paths re inked and a collaborative approach can help to achieve greater results,” he said. Over the next 12 months the sector will face some head winds but also some opportunities, Hextall continued. “The focus is to understand what those headwinds may be and how we can react to them. and how we can benefit from the opportunities. “These headwinds include the economic and political challenges, the next month there will be a general election, the economy has slowed down in the past 12 months, primarily driven by the high interest rates acting as a brake upon borrowing slowed down the number of houses being built and purchased and impacted on the number of people moving and improving, so the RMI market is down.”
He pointed out that net zero is also a challenge; the UK government has set the target of being carbon neutral by 2050. “With that comes the ambitious target of retrofitting around24 million homes that account for around 20% of the UK CO2 emissions. By my calculations, if we started today that would be around 2,500 houses being retrofitted every day right up until 2050 without a break. It is our sector that will be providing the materials to the homeowners the builders and the contractors doing the work. We need to make sure that the sills are out there to do the work we can advise and guide on those products, we can also help the homeowners to start on their retrofit journey.”
As a result, the sector is also going to need to attract new workers. “We need to position
our sector as being diverse and forward thinking with a huge variety of career options available to anybody who might be looking to move into our sector or join it from school, college of university. The best way to drive this will be via the BMF’s sector awareness campaign, with the strapline Building Material Careers - and the Maddie Rose Campaign which aims to raise the profile of the industry to school leavers.”
Product data standardisation is also a real opportunity, he said, adding that, in the past two years there has been a real push on this, and that NMBS will continue to support the ETIM technical classification which is being driven by the BMF. “We have also played a very active role in the BMF’s product data standardisation template. The reason we do this is that we believe there is a real benefit to everybody working from a common data format.
“We are also supporting the Code for Construction product Information which aims to ensure that product information is clear accurate, up to date, accessible and unambiguous and we have focussed on our One Place platform which supports this, and also supports ETIM and the BMF template.” He explained that NMBS had also been working a collaboration with the BMF on the possibility of a single industry data pool. This has the aim of being a single, trusted high quality central repository of product data for the whole of the building materials sector, developed by the industry for the industry. “We are doing this because it reduces duplication of effort, it ensures a single source of trusted data for everyone to work from. This supports the golden thread, ensuring that clear and consistent product data can pass down the while supply chain.” BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net July 2024
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