Rock Trading and Distribution

About Rock Trading and Distribution

Rock Trading and Distribution supplies engineered wood products, manufactured to customer requirements, insulation and cladding materials. The company is also the exclusive regional distributor for Porotherm blocks.

Owned by Rawle, Gammon and Baker Holdings Ltd (RGB) - a Kerridge Commercial Systems customer for 15 years, Rock required their K8 system to be set up as an independent trading environment, without any direct links to their parent company’s system. This approach would enable the business to trade with RGB, in addition to supplying builders’ merchants and regional developers throughout the West Country.

The K8 implementation involved a challenging schedule - there was less than three months from contract signature to Rock opening for business. In that time, the K8 project had to be scoped and planned, hardware installed and training programmes completed. Teams from both Kerridge CS and Rock worked very closely together throughout, with frequent conference calls and onsite attendance as required. The Kerridge CS METIS project methodology was fully applied from the start and particularly tight control was maintained on the RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies) documentation.

Although it was hard work for everyone because of the short timescales, we opened the business with K8.

Paul Turner- Finance Director at Rock Trading and Distribution

As part of the training process – a key part of the project, Rock staff tested out a range of different trading scenarios to gain familiarity with K8. Quickly embracing the system, the users found it particularly reassuring that their knowledge of the previous generation, text-based Rev7 system used by RGB was transferable. By go live day – the company’s first day of trading, Rock management reckoned that users had about 90% of the knowledge they required to run the business.

With the objective met, Rock was in a position to push K8’s functionality and use the system to help develop a profitable future for the business.

Gains and Benefits

• A modern fully integrated system
• Intuitive functionality
• Advanced purchasing and stock control
• Fast, efficient sales order processing
• Flexible financial and reconciliation tools
• Data export for group consolidation
• Scalable to support business development
• Proven and successful partner relationship