Edgar Brothers

About Edgar Brothers

Established in 1947, Macclesfield-based Edgar Brothers is a leading distributor and retailer of firearms and ammunition. Edgar Brothers' customers include shooting sports retailers, shooting grounds, police and defence sectors, and professional and leisure customers. Renowned for excellent customer service, the company now operates its business with K8 as its central ERP system.

Forward-thinking company

Emma Burgess, Operations Director, 'Although our OneOffice system has supported our business very well - a six-fold increase in ten years - we were falling behind getting the most from our systems. Workarounds and the use of third-party software have become necessary. As a forward-thinking company, this is not how we want to run the business.'

Need for investment

Realising the need for systems investment – Edgar’s staff needed more capable and advanced functionality to do their jobs and to improve business efficiencies in key areas.

With our trusted KCS partnership, we focussed on the business case for K8. We had to address some pressing requirements, notably integrated management information, warehouse management and procurement applications.

Emma Burgess - Operations Director at Edgar Brothers

Edgar Brothers have chosen to design a complete new business operation around K8. “The time was right to make a fresh start, revise our ISO9001 Quality Management System and steer towards making the best use of K8’s capabilities.”

Learning about K8’s capabilities

The K8 project began with the Discovery phase - the first part of METIS, the KCS implementation methodology. The KCS team ran several, in-depth ‘learning’ workshops focussing on different areas of the system’s business processes and established the basis for the system set-up.

The workshops highlighted K8’s considerable time-saving opportunities and efficiencies especially in procurement and warehousing along with the use of hand-held devices and bar codes.

Results

• Meets the requirement for a more capable software platform
• Eliminate bolt-on solutions and workarounds
• Introduce powerful business information tools
• Advanced warehouse management functionality
• Introduction of hand-held devices to improve efficiency
• The opportunity to enhance business processes
• K8 is ready to support future business development

A team effort for the best results

One particular aspect of K8 that appealed to LSK was its considerable flexibility and adaptability. During the system set-up, Ryan and his colleagues took time to understand how K8 could be fine-tuned to suit the business. Early engagement and commitment certainly paid off; moreover, it gave LSK complete ownership of its new system. Complementing this was the ‘train the trainer’ approach used to introduce the system to the staff; LSK also compiled help sheets to help build user skills and competencies.

The whole project is a team effort and everyone is totally committed to achieving the best result. We are fortunate to have like-minded, enthusiastic and ambitious employees, departments are taking responsibility for their own system applications and have their own ‘pot of gold’ to aim for.

A platform for future growth

Targeting some clear benefits, the Edgar Brothers are confident that the system will meet current needs now and be a platform for future growth. Having robust, effective and efficient systems will enable them to maintain its successful development and provide staff with the means to take the business forward.

Although it may not have been so a few years ago, we now have the capabilities to make K8 work for us.

Edgar Brother’s K8 project has now passed through the METIS Discovery phase - a learning process that highlighted the system’s time-saving opportunities. Now embarking on a comprehensive staff training programme for the award-winning ERP software Edgar Brothers will use a train-the-trainer approach to develop the required competencies and system knowledge. K8 will go live in January 2016 to coincide with the company’s financial year-end.

Highlights

• Identified as the best time for K8 migration
• Learning workshops to build system knowledge
• The comprehensive, structured training programme
• K8 is giving staff the tools they need
• System ‘gain’ objectives for each department