A last minute order needs shipping out urgently to forestall a customer chewing your ear off. There’s a truck warming up in the yard heading in vaguely the right direction so there’s an obvious solution – the faithful old “bung it on the back” method for urgent order satisfaction. Usually that does the trick, but there are obvious dangers. The risk of a blow out or busted axle due to load miscalculation may be remote, but a driver unable to read the details scribbled on the manifest with a masticated pencil stub, or the order not being accurately recorded in the office are definite possibilities.

Emphasising how the latest software systems are extending their tentacles into every aspect of the timber trader’s business, however, Progressive Solutions has added a new facet to its bisTrack product for building industry suppliers which transforms the ‘bung it on the back’ approach into a precise science.

“The new feature allows orders to be loaded onto journeys, with the total weight on the vehicle calculated and a journey manifest produced for the driver,” said Progressive’s Alan Hamilton. “The Microsoft Windows approach allows orders to be dragged onto a journey with a single mouse click – it’s simple to use and very attractive to merchants.”

Mr Hamilton added that this sort of functionality has helped the bisTrack system rapidly establish a presence in the merchanting sector nationwide. Progressive Solutions is Canadian-based and best known back home for its LumberTrack system for the wood and forest products sectors (translated for European customers like Timbmet and James Jones into TimberTrack). But bisTrack, launched in 2002, was developed at the company’s Runcorn office specifically for UK merchants and now has 25 users. In fact the software is building up such a following that in June a bisTrack user group was launched.

Another key development this year was the first sale of bisTrack in Ireland to Dublin-based Noyeks. Adding to the significance of the installation, which covers five sites and 100 users, is the fact that Noyeks also operates in Northern Ireland. This made it the first test of bisTrack’s multi-currency structure and its capabilities in “Intrastat” sales reporting, the EU system for monitoring cross-border trade.

“Noyeks’ sales reps are also remote stock and customer account status checking via their laptops,” said Mr Hamilton. “Currently they’re using GPRS connection [general packet radio service] to upload and download information to the central system, but we’re moving to cheaper, faster VPN [virtual private network].”

Logical step

Remote IT access has also been a focus for Ten-25 Software, with the new hand-held Paxar Pathfinder Ultra data recorder used in conjunction with its UniSTRIP and STRIP5 stock identification software, proving increasingly popular. The tool is claimed to be the “next logical step” in bar code labelling.

Besides reading and printing bar code labels, yard or warehouse operators can use the Paxar for reviewing and re-ordering stock by scanning shelf-edge labels and entering quantities, then automatically raising purchase orders. They can log incoming goods too.

“You can also use it for stock taking, price checking and price updating,” said Ten-25 director Ian Oldrey. “It is particularly popular with merchant shops that turn over large quantities of unit products.”

Ten-25 has also now integrated the Exchequer Software “Enterprise” multi-currency, mid-range accounting package into UniSTRIP and STRIP5. This gives a fully-graphical interface to accounting and management information, with the facility for the user to provide monthly trends or graphs and “drill down” for further detail.

The next big product launch from Ten-25 will be its Strip5 Trading, the successor system to UniTRADE.

“The new software will be a fully Windows look-and-feel product building on the current STRIP 5 financials and CRM modules to produce a fifth generation system for the timber industry,” said Ian Oldrey. “We’ll launch it to existing Ten-25 users in October and the general market in early 2005.”

New functionality

Kerridge Commercial Systems too has been developing its software to encompass more of the timber trader’s business functions. In fact, over the past year, marketing manager Suzanne Millward said that users of Kerridge’s K8 system have “enjoyed a vast amount of enhancements and new functionality” and it is sending out a “development roadmap” to help them keep up.

One important development has been the inclusion of “supplier rebate functionality” within K8 linked to supplier buying terms. This records details of all rebate agreements and monitors performance through “exception management” and K8’s reporting tools.

“Merchants are increasingly finding themselves in the rebates business – in some cases, they can equate to the company’s profit,” said Ms Millward. “With increasingly complicated rebates models – monthly, quarterly and annually, by product group and delivery method – keeping track can become very time consuming.”

Kerridge has also added to K8’s stock management capabilities with a new perpetual physical inventory (PPI) function. “This enables merchants to define start and end dates for the stock year and also the PPI working days of the week,” said Ms Millward. “By defining stock check classes and sorting products, you can identify products by high moving, high value and high risk.”

Another new K8 module, “Stock Sites”, provides full timber product tally display to help users manage stock over different sites and call off items from multiple locations.

Like Ten-25, Kerridge has focused on further integrating its software with hand-held devices enabling mobile staff to link to the back office and undertake such tasks as shelf edge price label checking, full stock and PPI stock monitoring. And K8 also now features automated invoice matching, has the facility to log scanned signed proof of delivery advice notes for sending to customers and has modules for tool hire and waste packaging management.

Pre-empting the ‘chip and pin’ revolution, Kerridge has also worked with “the leading third-party supplier of card processing solutions” to develop an integrated electronic funds transfer module, providing a “fully accredited smart card processing system”.

The new development for the timber sector from Edinburgh-based Sage developer Management Solutions is its Dimension 3 software for Sage Line 50 accounting packages.

According to David Hay, technical director at Management Solutions, the new product simplifies the way timber merchants carry out daily operations, producing sales orders, quotations, invoices and pro formas. It enables businesses that sell product by area or volume, rather than quantity, to input this data directly into Sage, rather than re-keying it later.

Reducing queries

“By allowing input and storage of dimensions for products sold by linear metre, square metre and cubic metre it results in much more meaningful delivery notes and invoices,” Mr Hay said. “In turn, this leads to fewer accounts queries. Basically the system gives a cost-effective solution to an old problem.”

He stressed that Sage users don’t need extra training to run Dimension 3 and, given this and the increased efficiencies the software produces, it rapidly pays for itself.

For Licom, best known for its CAD/CAM software such as CabinetVision, AlphaCIM is a departure, a new modular management programme designed for any “order-based company”. Features include sales order processing, a calculation module that provides cutting list data, inventory control, quotation generation, purchasing, production planning and scheduling.

Licom maintains that by allowing operators to check order status and generate reports, AlphaCIM can immediately spotlight “how they stand in both production and performance”. “Overall,” it says, “users are provided with greater freedom to concentrate on the needs of their customers, rather than being swamped with paperwork.”