Bearing Man

Challenge

Bearing Man, a bearing shop, opened in Durban in 1974 and gradually expanded its service and product offerings to include more than just bearings - a range of globally recognised brands of engineering products and components. The company, which now has more than 100 branches in South Africa, acquired Fenner Power Transmission distribution 1998, Invicta Bearings in 2000, Springset in 2004 and Oscillating Systems Technology in 2005. In addition to South Africa, Bearing Man operates in Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique.

The company’s legacy systems were reaching the end of their life, and with the onset of systems with graphical user interfaces, Bearing Man created a Request for Proposal for a replacement system. Following extensive evaluation and consideration for the project management, implementation and support, K8 was chosen. The new system, for a business of 1,000 users, in 105 branches, handling over 8,000 sales orders per day, went live on 1st August 2005.

Gains and benefits

• Improved functionality – processes faster and more efficient
• International trading capability – vital for company development
• Modern look and feel ‘GUI’ – easy and intuitive to use and minimal training
• A solid, scalable platform for the future
• Excellent user acceptance – strong staff ownership of ‘their’ new system
• A stable, secure supplier to support the future of the company

The level of user acceptance has been tremendous and the new technology positively embraced.

Abe Bekker - ICT Director