25 June 2007, Manufacturing & Logistics IT

Southern Alps, a producer of premium dried fruits and cereals, has announced the successful implementation of XKO’s Fourman ERP Software.

Southern Alps’ range of products is dependent on it sourcing ingredients from all over the world, and from its base in Kent it supplies delicatessens and finer food stores throughout the UK and also as far a field as France, Switzerland and even Russia. The dependence on an efficient supply chain meant the ERP system was critical to the success of the business.

Mo Almassi, Managing Director of Southern Alps, comments, “A new ERP system was a significant investment for us so we had to be confident it would provide a quantifiable return on investment. Fourman has not disappointed and has had a significant impact of the efficiency of the supply chain. For instance we have been able to reduce the time it takes to book raw materials such as fruit and cereals to five minutes where it was previously taking in excess of forty.”

The company has recently achieved accreditation by the British Retail Consortium, this was helped in part by the successful implementation of Fourman and in particular by its advanced traceability features which formed part of the accreditation process itself. Southern Alps is now trialing the system’s works order booking system which will go live in the next few weeks.

Almassi concludes, “The implementation time consumed was kept to a minimum by XKO and caused minimal disruption to the day-to-day workings of our business. In fact it was so efficient that it took just 11 days on site for XKO to get us up and running with the system, and this included having some handheld devices available from day one. We are very happy with both the software and service provided by XKO   Read More...

Builders merchants continue to ignore the online channel for business to business sales

Steven Hargreaves, Product Director at XKO Software asks why so many UK builders merchants continue to ignore the online channel for business to business sales citing complexity, cost and a lack of customer demand. But such attitudes are not only outdated, they are fundamentally constraining business expansion and limiting customer choice.

These organisations claim excellent customer service lies at the heart of their business success.

But failure to offer 24 hour product ordering, access to accounts information or stock availability checks is beginning to look far from impressive, especially when compared with the online services offered by the majority of larger competitors.

It is true there is no customer demand for poorly designed, stand-alone web sites.

Yet by extending core ERP technology onto the web, an organisation can seamlessly deliver consistent pricing, delivery and product information across a range of sales channels.

The result is greater customer choice and improved service at a lower cost of sale and a platform for significant market expansion.

So how can any builders merchants justify the lacklustre, unintegrated web sites that typify this marketplace?