South Coast Building Supplies
South Coast Building Supplies is a network of four builder's merchants operating across Dorset and Hampshire. Established in 2008, the company employs around 80 people and has an annual turnover of £25 million. With Intact iQ they are looking to retain their independence while strengthening their position in the market and expanding over the next few years.
Operational challenges before Intact iQ
Prior to implementing Intact iQ, South Coast Building Supplies faced significant challenges with their previous systems. Their biggest issue was the lack of integrated accounts, as their stock control and sales order processing were separate from their financial accounting. This led to extensive, unreliable reconciliations between two different systems.
Additionally, their previous systems handled price increases, stock valuation, and reporting poorly, resulting in inaccurate financial figures and unreconciled discrepancies.
South Coast Building Supplies chose Intact iQ because it provided a solution designed for their industry and could adapt to their specific business needs. As Managing Director Tim Payne explains:
"From our perspective, working with a partner who truly understood our industry and its unique challenges played a big part in choosing Intact iQ. What we appreciated most was that Intact rarely said 'no.' Instead, they worked with us to find creative ways to achieve the customisations required to support how we run our building supplies business. This is what led us to Intact iQ over anyone else”
Intact iQ Transforms South Coast Building Supplies
For South Coast Building Supplies, Intact iQ delivers the much-needed integration they lacked, ensuring every transaction has a matching financial entry. This integration significantly improves the control and visibility they have into their business, allowing for better decision-making, traceability and adjustments as needed.
Highlighting this benefit, Louis Jenkins, Management Accountant at South Coast Building Supplies, says:
"Intact iQ allows us to establish procedures and checks that give us better visibility into what's happening across our business. With these procedures in place, we can interrogate them, identify areas for improvement, and make changes as necessary to keep things running smoothly”
The flexibility to customise Intact iQ to their needs also provided greater control and agility in their operations. Tim adds:
"With Intact iQ, we can quickly adjust product prices or job volumes with just a few clicks. This responsiveness allows us to manage product shortages or price increases efficiently. For our customers, we added a new field on our statements to resolve a pain point for them. The system is just so easy to customise to how we work."
One standout feature for Sean Williamson, IT Manager at South Coast Building Supplies, is Intact iQ's scheduling software. The transport scheduler module enables them to better plan and visualise their daily routes and orders, leading to more effective sales management. This has also eliminated lost or changed orders that were previously missed with paper-based processes.
In addition, Intact iQ’s document scanning software replaced their former paper-based filing system, significantly improving efficiency and ease of document retrieval. Tim, reflecting on this improvement, highlights:
"Everything is digitally stored now, making scanning and saving documents so much faster. Being able to locate files with just a few clicks rather than digging through misfiled papers eliminates so much hassle for us. Finding an invoice, and any related items takes seconds, not minutes. It just saves us so much time."
Louis emphasises the time savings further:
"We completed a full pricing reboot for several thousand products in just two weeks, a task that would have taken three months or more before. And Intact iQ’s data linking to Excel and custom report templates also saves us loads of time, reducing our monthly report preparation from 4-5 days to just one day."
Other benefits for the team in South Coast Building Supplies include:
- Having the ability to control margins, manage orders, and handle other tasks from one central location has been immensely beneficial
- With easy access to the information they need, they can make smarter decisions and are more self-sufficient, no longer needing to request multiple reports from colleagues or combine data.
- Their previous annual stock count was a cumbersome process. Now, with Intact iQ's ABC system, they can easily count inventory daily by supplier, product, or category, giving them accurate, real-time stock levels and saving a lot of time.
The Future
With Intact iQ in place, South Coast Building Supplies has set aspirations to double their current size, leveraging the capabilities of the software to support their growth plans.
When asked if they had any recommendations for anyone looking to implement a new ERP system, Sean advised - “Ensure your data is fully up-to-date and accurate before migrating to the new ERP system. And Tim added: “Be open-minded to process changes recommended by your knowledgeable consultants during implementation. We felt this open-mindedness resulted in a better quality implemented system overall”.
“From our perspective, working with a partner who truly understood our industry and its unique challenges played a big part in choosing Intact iQ.”
