Haldane Fisher

One of the leading suppliers to the construction industry in N. Ireland

Haldane Fisher is a family-owned building and timber merchant that's been successfully trading since 1946. The company notably takes pride in delivering exceptional customer service and continually improving its business operations. They have been using K8, the flagship ERP solution from Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS), to manage their trading and finance activities for many years. In line with their commitment to continuous improvement, Haldane Fisher has also implemented Phocas to complement K8, enabling them to leverage enhanced business intelligence (BI) and improve the speed and quality of their decision-making across all aspects of their business.

Neal Boomer, Group Finance Director at Haldane Fisher explains how K8 has successfully driven many developments over the years as the system has grown.

'The openness of K8 provided us with the means of becoming one of the first builders’ merchants in Northern Ireland to go live with a fully-functional and integrated ecommerce website, allowing customers to check stock availability across our branch network as and when they need to,' Neal said

How K8 works at the core of Haldane Fisher's business

Michelle McKee, Group Project Accountant at Haldane Fisher highlights how K8 is an intrinsic part of the business.

All transactions are processed through the system, and our staff use it daily for sales, purchasing, finance and stock management. Ultimately, K8 is at the heart of our day-to-day operations and has the capability to store huge amounts of data.

Michelle McKee - Group Project Accountant at Haldane Fisher

Integrating K8 with Phocas for analytics in real-time

Haldane Fisher wanted to digitally transform and modernise their data management to enhance their customer offering and business efficiency. Consequently, they recognised the benefits of taking the transaction and business data within K8 into the cloud-based BI and analytics solution that is Phocas.

Since its successful implementation, Haldane Fisher has transformed their data access with informative insights that enhance decision-making for the benefit of the company and their customers.

Michelle explains how Phocas helps them to efficiently analyse large volumes of data.

Phocas is a self-service system that’s fast and easy to use, empowering our staff to find the answers to questions immediately rather than waiting for weekly or monthly reports.

Michelle McKee - Group Project Accountant at Haldane Fisher

Key Benefits

• Sophisticated stock and logistics management
• Scalable, easy to deploy
• Simple to use yet powerful order management
• Integrated email for invoices, statements, purchase orders, etc

'This not only increases efficiency but also means staff have objective knowledge in an easily understandable, visual format to help drive improvement in all areas across the business,' Neal said.

Neal expands on Phocas's benefits of making data so readily available and understandable, one of which is that staff can respond and react to it in real-time.

'As all of the key data elements in K8 feed into Phocas, change can happen quickly throughout all areas of the business. For example, when a sales transaction has been processed, it is quickly available for review by the product, branch, or division and compared easily to budget and prior years. The intuitive functionality of Phocas has been key to seeing the application widely adopted throughout the company,' Neal adds.

'All it takes is one click to get your sales data customised to a branch or customer; the combination of speed and flexibility helps staff at all levels make better decisions faster,' Michelle notes.

Another improvement is the flexibility to distribute data, with up-to-date reports available to staff at their chosen frequency. From daily to once a week or at month-end, such instinctive functionality creates enormous efficiencies.

Michelle adds that using K8 and Phocas together offers significant advantages over K8 alone before mentioning an unexpected benefit. 'It’s a very visual piece of software, which makes it easier for you to see anomalies and outliers in a way you couldn’t so easily before,' Michelle said.

Jason Bradshaw, Partner Alliance Manager for Phocas UK is delighted that Phocas has been able to help Haldane Fisher harness the power of their K8 data.

They've pushed for more of their business data to be accessed within Phocas so they have one version of the truth across the entire business. We look forward to working with them for many years to come.

Jason Bradshaw - Partner Alliance Manager for Phocas UK

Using K8 and Phocas in tandem means Haldane Fisher has a powerful business solution, leaving them excited about the future as they look to continue to grow and deliver the outstanding customer service for which they are renowned.

Highlights

• Ability to access K8 remotely and continue trading off-site
• Improved product margins allow more informed customer pricing
• Batch invoice processing is now around four times faster
• Enhanced stock reporting to identify slow-moving items