Users of Kerridge Commercial Systems’ (KCS) K8 software are a committed bunch. Such is their enthusiasm for learning and updating themselves on the KCS software portfolio that 150 of them travelled an estimated combined 60,000 miles to attend the company’s annual customer conference on May 1-2.
And such is the diversity of the customer base that delegates represented companies involved in the distribution of timber and other building materials, along with fish radar systems and ginger biscuits.
This customer loyalty has paid dividends, with company turnover rising rapidly from £57m to £82m over the last few years. This, said KCS Group chief executive officer, Ian Bendelow, was down to customers’ “insatiable appetite for more KCS solutions, more quickly”, which, in turn, had led to the company investing in more product.
The company now has more than 10,000 customers across Europe, South Africa, Australia and the US and has seven offices in the UK and 18 across the world. Employee numbers have risen to around 900, 27% of whom work in R&D.
Growth has come through winning new customers and also through acquisitions that enable the integration of new technology into the core K8 ERP system.
These include Current-RMS and InspHire in October 2018. Current- RMS is an Australian company supplying cloud based, fully integrated rental management solutions to the AV, production and event industries, while InspHire is a premium supplier of software to European, US and Australian-based companies that rent heavy plant and construction vehicles.
Other acquisitions include IQ Retail in 2017, a South African company offering “a smaller, simpler version of K8”.
“It’s a good ‘out of the box’ solution for smaller businesses and we have rebranded it K8 Trader,” said Mr Bendelow. “Our objective is to make sure we have a solution for all size customers.”
Another 400 customers were gained last year through the acquisition of EDP. EDP supplies sales analytics and CRM and ERP software, such as Vecta and Quantum, to merchants and other distributors.
By integrating the EDP business with KCS, all customers will be offered a more extensive product suite. KCS will also offer the Vecta CRM/BI product to its wider global customer base as a stand-alone product, as well as integrating it as a module within some of the KCS products. KCS will continue to service and support customers using EDP’s Quantum, Merchant, Charisma, Esprit and The Business Programme products. Over time, KCS will offer alternative products (such as its core K8 ERP system) to EDP customers, as potential longer-term solutions.
“We are ready to migrate customers to K8 whenever they are ready,” said Mr Bendelow. Other companies brought into the group are Dutch company AGP in 2018, South African company Integrity Software in 2016 and UKbased Lakeview Computers in 2017.
“Our strategy has been to invest and grow by creating depth of customer base around these geographies and by a crossfertilisation of ideas,” said Mr Bendelow. “Our aim is to bring on board more products and solutions and to make K8 more compelling. We will also bring in more people with more experience.”
One such is newly appointed managing director, James Mitchell, who has joined the company to focus on the UK and Ireland business. As well as outlining his career as a technologist, he also used his first conference appearance to emphasise the continuing growth of KCS and its commitment to investment.
He also appealed to delegates to “get current, stay current”, by keeping their software up to date, adding that there were currently several versions of the K8 platform in the market, which wasn’t sustainable indefinitely.
“Let us help you unlock the full potential and value of your investment [in K8] by upgrading,” said Mr Mitchell. “All new products are integrated to the latest release, which is why we believe our customers are served best by using it. Once upgraded, further upgrades become a much simpler and a more regular, less risky and costly process and this will also enable you to take full advantage of all the investments that KCS is making in apps and services.”
Chief support officer Chris Owen updated delegates on changes he was making to transform support services through investment in a new support services team; enhanced knowledge base and self-service options; individual scorecards if required; and a defensive programming initiative, which was preventing common user mistakes.
Tony Pey, head of product marketing, explained how the use of business apps is “enabling companies to take technology to their jobs, rather than taking a job to technology”.
The mobile apps already available to K8 users include ePOD, which now manages over 12,000 deliveries each day. Others in the pipeline for later this year include eBranchOrder, an app for placing orders around the branch, which also includes functionality for timber companies working with tally quantities; eStocktake which also manages PI; and eWarehouse which is a comprehensive solution for managing all warehouse activity.
Mr Pey also told delegates about the forthcoming Configurator module, which is an innovative solution for building complex configurations, designed for use by manufacturers of doors and so on, and which will include customers’ specific pricing.
He added that the company’s digital strategy is to create effective “point solutions” – ie very specific to a particular task – and to streamline the workflow and avoid duplication. This way, he said, customers could empower their staff yet retain control.
Other presentations on the day included the case for cloud-based software, by Jon Messenger, account manager, who said that 80% of KCS’s new customers choose to use KCloud. This brought benefits including cost reduction and efficiencies; data security; scalability; business agility/flexibility; disaster recovery; and control and visibility of data.
Chris Hirst, head of pre-sales and Jayne Hill, Vecta product manager, followed with an explanation of how Vecta can “unlock the power from your data”.
Ms Hill said that K8 users who have already implemented Vecta are finding that the data sales staff could previously only find by asking someone to run a report, was now being delivered direct to the dashboards of the individuals who need it. She said one customer had found that by using Vecta their sales team had 20% more time to spend in front of customers.
