The Internet’s popularity as a medium for timber trading is part of a wider trend for moving information about timber around the industry. Linking timber trading systems to other systems, such as design software, is a key issue.
David Sinclair, timber product consultant with the established supplier Kerridge Computer Company Ltd, said: ‘What appears to be on people’s agendas is getting the orders in from different media, especially the design route. So we are looking at integrating other systems so that it becomes a seamless exercise.’
The trend stems from the proliferation of design software, especially roof truss and timber frame construction, and also kitchen and bathroom design. Linking this to a timber system removes the need for re-keying the ordering information from the design package to the merchant’s system.
Mr Sinclair said: ‘If you take roof trusses, the customer will not only order the roof truss, they will order other things as well. This will generate an invoice, all broken down so that charging it all out is simple.
‘We have a generic approach. What we do is set out a mapping tool to recognise the fields within these design packages and extract the information. In this way we have been able to cope with every roof truss system.’
Mr Sinclair said these are part of on-going enhancements to the company’s KITE (Kerridge Integrated Trading Environment) system. Kerridge has 2,500 customers using systems from five to 6,000 users. One major merchant has 540 sites.
Sales manager Paula Hayter said: ‘What we are looking at is seamless integration, not having to go out of one system and into another. This may mean different activities at different sites. We were the first to introduce Contact Centre and the integration of telephony so the system can be used in conjunction with a call centre.’
She added: ‘We are known as a big system provider but that is deceptive. We genuinely welcome everybody through the range. In fact, some of our most innovative customers are not the big players but rather the SMEs. It’s the ideas that come from these customers that we incorporate into our products – they are certainly impressive.’
