Amex Auto

About Amex Auto

Amex Auto trades in vehicle spare parts, specialising in crash parts such as bonnets, headlamps and fenders.

Established in 1988, the privately held company is led by husband and wife team, Sajni Shah and Devesh Patel, who are Co-CEOs. Sajni joined the company in 2013 and saw the potential to take the business to the next level. She moved the company headquarters from the town of Kisumu to the capital Nairobi and expanded to 4 branches. Over the same period of time, the team grew from 4 to 56.

"We’re proud of being a diverse workforce, with a young team and fresh ideas, and we’re nimble enough to capture opportunities fast," Sajni said. "As Co-CEO I want to support my team to learn as much as they can and build their skill set in their careers. Practical experience in a real business environment will equip a young Kenyan workforce to truly compete."

The automotive after-market in Kenya is fragmented and competition comes from one-branch businesses. Sajni and Devesh have decided to invest in K8, a sophisticated ERP system, developed by Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS). K8 software will deliver the scalable technology they need as they grow from a small, family-run business to a multi-branch operation. They are also planning to open 2 distribution centres later this year. The investment they have made in their team will also, they believe, provide a foundation to support their planned growth.

Up until now, Amex Auto has used a basic accounting system alongside a locally developed POS system.

Without full integration of processes from front end to back end, visibility of the business performance has been limited and decisions sometimes made on instinct and sentiment. K8 will let us view business operations better and allow us to drill down to several metrics.
Sajni Shah - Co-CEO at Amex Auto

Results

The Amex Auto team is now able to make better-informed decisions because they have:

• Real-time access to actual data and performance
• The ability to better monitor the performance of each branch, product line and individual salespeople
• The capability to drill down to gross margins achieved for each product

Sajni looked at three other systems before choosing K8. She explained the reasons behind her choice. "K8 has a forecasting module that will allow us to purchase more efficiently. The ability to see many data points such as profitability per product line or profitability per branch is very important."

"It will also allow us to have a trackable incentive scheme for salespeople. From the accounting perspective, we can easily build in a settlement discount that allows us to improve our cash flow. The accounting module and POS are end-to-end which means that any transaction, happening anywhere, will immediately hit our trial balance. There will be no bridging between the two systems and reconciliations. K8 will also allow us to do our bank reconciliations more easily and the customer portal will allow our customers to see their statements and documents such as credit notes, in real-time, without the need to call the office."

"The print functionalities will allow us to print cash sales on till slips like a supermarket receipt, so there’s no need to waste expensive pre-printed stationery. Internal pick notes will also be printed on till slips allowing our warehouse team to pick items that can then be verified against an invoice or cash sale."

Amex Auto is also taking on the K8 e-commerce solution, Web Builder, which lets you quickly deploy a fully integrated online trading platform that shows customers their own pricing terms as you maintain them in K8. They can place orders, view and pay their account, enquire on order status and copy documents on whatever type of device they choose - at their leisure and after hours.

Reflecting on her decision to choose K8 software, Sajni concluded:

The benefits are way too many to list. KCS is a company that has spent many decades providing every possible computation and combination that a distributor or trader may need. K8 is a niche product for distributive trades with a very strong background in automotive - they tick all the boxes for us. It was a very easy choice to make – I just wish we had found it sooner.
Sajni Shah - Co-CEO at Amex Auto