A large independent supplier of building, farming, and garden materials in East Anglia, Clarkes of Walsham, is a family-run business carrying an extensive range of products and services across their 10-acre site. In addition, they supply country clothing and operate an outlet for cartridges and shooting accessories.
Proud of the valued service they provide both their trade and counter customers alike, Clarkes, found themselves compelled to upgrade their ageing software when support for their system was ending. It’s significant limitations where also hampering everything they tried to do and future plans of becoming paperless weren’t accommodated.
With such an investment of time and money, the team at Clarkes conducted a vast search for their perfect-fit ERP software, intent on finding a solution that would match their bespoke set of processes and ways of doing things
For Clarkes, selecting Intact iQ meant not having to change everything to suit the new software. It had the flexibility to cater for most of their process and how they did them, but in a modern way. According to Tom Skevington, Company Accountant, “We couldn’t see this as an option with other software packages.”
Naturally, upgrading from a 22-year-old system was a huge undertaking for all involved but even in this transitional stage of going live, staff have noticed how quickly they can do their jobs. And for the business, it means a better way of doing things.
Tom notes that “Every feature was an upgrade of what we had previously. There isn’t a single process that hasn’t been positively impacted by Intact iQ. And as a result, we have become more efficient and productive, and we’ve reduced costs significantly”.
As the company’s system administrator Tom added ‘It’s so easy to change things, like add in a column. And even by knowing this simple process, the rest of the system works in a similar manner, including the form designer. It’s great you don’t need any coding and we know that if we need things done that we can’t do, a consultant can help us without requiring developer input”.
On their implementation, Tom notes “From the outset, all the way through and even after our go-live, our implementation was nothing short of exceptional. Everything went smoothly, and I think that was largely due to the good relationship we built up with our consultant and project managers. I can’t speak highly enough of our consultant”.
Looking to the future, Tom and his team will look to implement the mobile warehouse solution, and in particular mobile yard ordering, to help them better serve their customers. This module will, in time, enable them to keep paper processes as limited as possible.
They will also go live with their integrated ecommerce site, something they were unable to achieve on their old system; saving a lot of admin time looking at what’s been sold on the website.
With little visibility to the production side of their business, the Intact works ordering processing module will, for the first time, let everyone see what the production side sees and reduce the number of manual processes they do in Excel.
To conclude, Clarke’s Intact iQ consultant, Simon McCarthy, adds “From early on, Clarke’s enthusiasm for Intact iQ was clear to see and working with their project’s team, Tom and Nicola, was an absolute pleasure. They worked tirelessly with me to push Intact iQ to its full potential and completely absorbed themselves in the project. As a consultant, it is very rewarding to work with such an engaged team and to see the benefits iQ provides a business. I wish them every success in the future with Intact iQ as the driving force”.
