Builders merchants | News

Making the upgrade

The ST Group has been owned by Andrew Smith's family for nearly 50 years, starting out in life supplying timber and bespoke joinery. Now employing 35 staff and operating as a general builders' merchant, joinery manufacturer, kitchen supplier and DIY centre, the company splits its business evenly between trade and retail customers — recent diversifications include hot tubs and Scandinavian log cabins!

Until two years ago, the company was using a DOS-based system for order processing, linked to a Sage Line 100 accounts package. The system was not industry specific and Andrew was concerned about the supplier's lack of development plans. He therefore tasked his Management Accountant to source a Windows based computer system which had the capability to interface with other Windows products — and perhaps most significantly, one which was designed develop in line with his own plans for growth within ST Group.

Andrew and his team assessed three systems in detail but it was during a demonstration of Progressive Solutions’ bisTrack software that they saw a system which ‘stood out from the crowd’. The software is a Microsoft Windows enterprise application, developed especially for builders’ merchants and other distributors to the building industry and now more than 50 user companies across the UK are said to be enjoying the program’s functionality and measurable benefits.

Once the decision to purchase bisTrack was made, Andrew states that implementation went smoothly. Customer and product data was cleansed and transferred electronically from the old system and as the new system can be integrated with many leading Windows-based products for sales, purchase and nominal ledgers ST Group also implemented Sage Line 50.

Staff training

Staff training was taken particularly seriously. “We attracted funds from the Learning and Skills Council which enabled us to set up a training suite, employ a qualified trainer and set up a sort of 'conveyor belt' of training activity,” explained Andrew. With staff having a wide range of IT ability and skills, training was provided on an individual basis with all staff achieving the ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence). There are now eight users, including Andrew, his senior managers and all customer-facing staff.

To illustrate how easy ST Group found the system to use, Andrew described how he has just employed an 18 year old school leaver who wants to join the company on a long term basis. “By the end of his first day, this young lad was using it comfortably. He was serving customers, booking out key accounts and even showing the member of staff allocated to train him how to create shortcuts within the system!”

From a management point of view Andrew is delighted with the speed with which he can use the drill-down mechanisms to retrieve accurate customer and product information. “If there's a customer I want to keep an eye on, as soon as I see them driving away, I can check what they've bought, how much they spent, and the amount of credit we're giving them. If a customer asks me for more discount because he's spending a certain amount with us, I can look at his trading history on bisTrack and make an informed decision quickly. It simply takes away all the guesswork out of this type of decision.”

With regard to trade counter operations, Assistant Manager, John Scott, said, “On our old system, we couldn't do quotes. This was a problem when a customer came in saying he'd been quoted a price by a member of staff who wasn't around to verify it. Now customer quotes are entered into the system and any of us can quickly find and retrieve them. Another useful feature is being able to check the price of products sold to customers on previous visits. It's also really useful to be able to search for a product by its name or part of its name instead of having to remember individual codes.”

After seeing what bisTrack could do for ST Group, Andrew decided to purchase the system for his other company, Qualplas — a well established manufacturer and supplier of PVCu windows, conservatories and cladding systems. He said: “We only had a till at Qualplas before implementing bisTrack! But there didn't seem to be any sense in knowing what was going on in one company and not the other. Now, although the two companies are autonomous, I can access sales information and check the performance of both from my laptop. We've also set up remote accessing so wherever I am I can keep a close eye on the day-to-day operations of each of my companies.”