It’s a widely held view that the last 18 months would have been a lot tougher had it not been for communication platforms such as Zoom and Teams, and the ability to shop online. For businesses, the digital revolution has been a life saver.
Software system providers to the timber industry went into overdrive last year, enabling increasingly busy merchants not just to weather the storm but to capitalise on the surge in business created by the DIY/RMI boom. And they adapted their own operations to do so, working with customers remotely.
“The whole engagement from sale through to install has been almost completely virtual,” said James Mitchell, managing director UK and Ireland at Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS). “At the moment about 70% of our consultancy and installation work is carried out remotely and I think it will stay that way. It’s a much more flexible, efficient and sustainable way of working.”
It’s a change in practice mirrored by others. “Demos and training are all done remotely now – and it works very well,” said Ian Oldrey, managing director at Ten-25. “A lot more can be achieved and the productivity gains are fantastic. It’s nice to be physically in front of people and see their business as it works, but six hours of training is heavy going. Hour-long, bite-sized chunks are much more digestible and far more valuable.”
The benefit of Ten-25’s Merchanter system (formerly known as UT400) is that being cloud-based there is no need to install servers on site or supply specialist hardware. “We set up a version of the system for each client and they access it from a browser,” said Mr Oldrey.
He added that a dedicated trainer has just been recruited to help customers get up and running quickly.
“And we are recruiting for three other positions as well – and possibly a fourth. For a business like ours that is quite rapid growth and I think it’s testament to how the new system is selling.”
Border Merchant Systems – which celebrated its recent 30th anniversary with a rebrand – also experienced the benefits of the video conference.
“We launched the first of our bi-annual system updates in April,” said Phil Davies, commercial manager. “The biggest difference with the rollout was hosting our first online user meeting. We usually hold a physical user meeting each year and run through system updates and the development roadmap. Being forced to move the meeting online has worked in our favour. We were able to get more customers involved and feedback was really good, so we’ll be sticking with online rollout meetings going forward.”
Customers’ needs have changed dramatically over the 18 months and digitalisation and ecommerce, which pre- Covid, would have taken several years to achieve (with the timber sector lagging some way behind other industries) have been widely taken up.
“Due to the long-term nature of the pandemic, we’ve seen many customers become more robust, open-minded and agile as a result,” said Mark Fear, BisTrack territory manager at Epicor Software. “They’ve needed to respond quickly to unforeseen change and have developed new systems and processes to be able to do so.
“Much of that is down to digital transformation, whether that’s opening an online store for the first time, or investing in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools they need to connect seamlessly with suppliers, customers and employees. Communication and transparency have been, and remain, key priorities.”
Epicor is seeing more interest in cloud and that whereas 12-18 months ago businesses were reluctant to store their data in the cloud, now it is considered a safe storage solution – and it makes a lot of sense given the increasing appetite for remote automation.
“Epicor isn’t an exclusively cloud-driven business,” he said. “We want to give customers the scope and time to gravitate from on-premises at a pace that suits them. But today we have got 6,000 customers using our cloud solutions and timber has contributed to that, for sure.”
Mr Fear added that embracing ecommerce had been “a seismic shift” for businesses used to relying on proven manual processes.
Border Merchant Systems incorporated the Magento e-trading platform into its CounterAct system last year and says its web services have been very popular.
“They are so important to get right so businesses can expand their trading area, increase brand awareness and to help safeguard them in the event of a pandemic or trade counter closure,” said Mr Davies.
Border is so busy building full system integrated websites for its customers, enabling them to manage online and offline sales from one system, that it has a waiting list. But if a merchant doesn’t want or need a full trading website, it can offer an existing website bolt-on – the Account Customer Portal.
“This allows the merchant to give their trade account users an online login area to easily see and pay invoices, view orders and so on,” said Mr Davies. “These have been very popular and are a great addition for merchants to provide an improved service for trade clients and increase customer loyalty.”
Ten-25 has started to pick up “a fantastic number of new customers” as a result of businesses looking at their digital strategy against a backdrop of growing demand.
“As their businesses grow it puts pressure on their operations and a really good ERP system means you know what stock you have and can turn around quotes and orders and process them more easily.”
Last year Ten-25 established links with eCommonSense, a business with a merchant specific webshop, and has customers making full use of that. And two of its customers have just gone live linking in with Amazon and eBay and other ecommerce platforms that have been written with more generic tools such as WooCommerce and Shopify.
“eCommonSense is fantastic and we have partnered with them because they have a really good platform for merchants and it is a very good tie-up with the ERP system,” said Mr Oldrey. “But other customers have already got sites in place, or they are selling through other channels, such as Amazon and eBay, so we are making sure that that connectivity can be added into their ERP system as well.”
James Mitchell highlighted the importance of customers marketing their ecommerce capability and using search engine optimisation (SEO) and other tools to ensure their existing and prospective customers know about their website and that they can easily be found in Google searches. And, he said, it is vital that the supply chain and delivery process is up to scratch.
“This is where integration with a solid and robust ERP system such as K8 is important, ensuring your website can accurately inform your customer on current stock levels and, if not available right now, give them a reasonable estimate of delivery date.
“The Amazon experience has driven all of us to expect a product to be on our doorstep within 24 hours, and certainly no longer than 48 hours,” said Mr Mitchell. “People will shop around until they find a supplier who will get the product to them when they need it.”
For KCS, he said, “the drive for customers to have more open systems continues”, by which he means easy third party access in and out of the K8 ERP system. An example would be easily integrating with a courier company, or electronically trading with customers and suppliers exchanging sales and purchase orders.
“The Kerridge Digital Services suite is proving to be extremely popular, with many customers deploying the application programming interface (API) tools. This then gives them the ability to integrate their K8 system electronically with other partners,” said Mr Mitchell. “Go back three years and if a customer wanted to trade with someone else they would come to us and ask for an interface to be written but now the customer’s trading partner can use the API to interact live with their ERP.”
Third party relationships are another key development area for KCS, which has just recruited a third party relationship director.
“We already integrate with a lot of third parties but we are ready to bring those relationships more tightly together.”
A good example of that, which KCS launched at Christmas, is an interaction with a credit card provider, Paymentsense. Another is with the leading data analytics partner, Phocas, which provides customers with the sophisticated tools they need to transform their ERP data into rich business intelligence.
“We will forge more of these strategic partnerships with third parties – particularly in areas where our customers can really benefit from using a specialist tool specifically designed for the job.”
As might be expected in such a dynamic phase of trading, software upgrades have continued apace.
“When many customers had to experience new ways of working due to Covid, we released more mobile solutions, which added to a more flexible way of working,” said Epicor’s Mark Fear. “We also introduced more innovative digital software, such as ‘anywhere’ payments and signatures as a way of adapting our digital offering.”
He added that, here again, cloud-based systems have the advantage, with upgrades taking place remotely.
“You avoid the complexity of an overly customised system and ensure that you’re always on the latest version, which will include cybersecurity updates to protect you from the latest threats.”
Border Merchant Systems has released two system updates in the last 12 months, with all its users receiving them as part of their support contract.
“The last upgrade contained more than 600 enhancements to the system,” said Mr Davies. “Highlights include work around the auto emailing of delivery notifications and order acknowledgements, a new lost margin review that helps merchants identify where they may be giving away profit.
“Our biggest project at the moment is giving our customers more flexibility in how they run our system, whether it is via a server on site, or in the cloud, running an application on a PC or via a browser. This has been in development for a while and the pandemic has just backed up our decision and rationale for doing this.”
Mr Davies added that updating the core database its system runs on will create “exciting opportunities” on how Border develops and delivers its software.
Last year, Ten-25’s upgrade to Merchanter included more functionality, opening it up to more customers, including hardwood merchants and agents. More has been achieved since then, with the company adding to the full contracting functionality so that importing is more capable.
“We have also started adding significantly to the milling, value added processing side of the system as well, so there are better tools for moving stock around accurately and re-costing it as processes are being applied to it,” said Mr Oldrey. “Quite a lot of cool stuff.”
Another new element is Stock Confidence, a stock holding rating system that has been rolling out with customers since the start of the year.
And the company has recently put in smarter searches so that the exact product – or customer – that is being looked for in the database can be found with fewer key strokes.
“Some of the big wins come from little features like this,” he said.
KCS’s software is “continually” being tweaked in line with customer feedback, said Mr Mitchell.
“The ecommerce platform is a true SaaS (software as a service) platform, so every time we make an enhancement, every customer gets that immediately. We have a roadmap and are investing in it every day.”
The enhancements, added Tony Pey, KCS’s global business development manager, are all about finding more efficiencies for customers.
“Deskilling jobs has become quite important because many businesses have been running on short staff [due to Covid measures] and they need to spread the load more widely,” he said, adding that the KCS software had helped customers achieve that.
One example of the enhancements included in the latest update of K8 he picked out is around finance. Manual processing of supplier invoices has become a challenge for time-poor companies and K8 now imports these electronically into the system, even if they come in as a PDF or an email, and auto matches them.
“It only reports exceptions, so it immediately cuts down on all that manual data processing and matching,” said Mr Pey.
KCS will shortly be introducing a new suite of apps designed for the warehousing aspect of the trade, which, it says, will aid the whole movement of goods through the facility.
The company is continuing to take the business process away from the PC in the office and out to where the task is actually being performed via a layer of apps that interact with the ERP.
Its electronic point of delivery app – ePOD – has already proved a success.
“The workflow is quite straightforward,” said Mr Mitchell. “The drivers download a manifest for what is on their lorry and that goes directly onto the ePOD system, which then gives them their routes and delivery instructions. When they drop off at the customer they can take photographs and ask the customer to sign on the glass and that immediately updates the K8 system.”
KCS also has apps for the sales function, enabling salespeople to effectively connect via the internet from a tablet and complete quotes and orders when they are with the customer, rather than having to wait until they return to their office.
And that remote connectivity isn’t just about making the sale then and there, it’s also about empowering sales people by giving them the tools to “mine information”, said Tony Pey. “Importantly, it’s not just about what the customer is buying at present, it’s also about understanding what they aren’t buying and where the opportunities are.”
Epicor’s Mark Fear agrees.
“The BisTrack app is widely used by our customers for mobiles and tablets. The app gives flexibility to the salesperson on the road, documenting everything from proof of order to client signatures, to geolocation of deliveries – it’s a pocket-sized window into the digital supply chain.”
He added that, withing the next 12-18 months, Epicor would be sharing full BisTrack functionality through a web browser, too, which, he said, “will be a huge boon in terms of both accessibility and functionality”.
Border Merchant Systems is also active on the app front and said its stock check mobile app is proving to be increasingly popular.
“We are also developing a mobile proof of delivery app for the next system rollout,” said Mr Davies.
Predictions in the Covid era are difficult, but there are plenty of reasons for optimism.
“I think there are tremendous opportunities because merchants are still keen to improve their digital strategy, keen to offer a better service and keen to have a more dynamic and modern system to manage their business,” said Mr Oldrey.
“The challenge and the opportunity is the same: finding a rhythm,” added Mr Fear. “Organisations in every niche of the timber industry can get ahead of the competition by planning for ambiguity, building resilience and future proofing their operational models.”
