Lakeside Timber

About Lakeside Timber

Lakeside Timber operates from a modern showroom in Gillingham and supplies a huge range of timber, sheet materials, decking, doors, windows and tools to customers across the Medway area.

One of the company’s specialist areas is the supply of loft conversion products. Established in 1989 by Del Peters, today the company is managed by his son Lee, who is a director. There are eight full time employees as well as two apprentices. Business is split fairly evenly between retail and trade customers with many of the trade account holders having dealt with Lakeside since the company started. 

As we’re a small, family run business, we have a great relationship with our customers because we know most of them well. They trade with us as we can compete on price with the big nationals and our staff offer a great service and are all highly trained in the products we sell.

Lee Peters - Director at Lakeside Timber

A Fisher Price toy till eventually made way for some early business management software which has only recently been upgraded to K8, a modern ERP system developed by Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS). 

Our incumbent provider informed us they were no longer supporting our software at about the same time we realised it was time to upgrade to a more modern system.

We needed more functionality around business intelligence and accurate visibility of stock. I looked at one other solution before choosing K8. Cost was a factor in my decision but not the only factor. I was more impressed with the attitude of the K8 sales team and the quality of their demonstration.

Lee Peters - Director at Lakeside Timber

KCS is well known in the builders’ and timber merchant industry for its core solution, K8, which is relevant to all types and sizes of business, including those with less than 20 users. K8 offers all the functionality a business needs around sales, purchasing, stock control and accounting and can be set up to manage a business the size of Lakeside Timber very quickly, with minimal training required.

Already Lee and his team are benefitting from the detailed reporting capabilities of K8 when they check their live business performance figures at the end of each day. And, once implementation is complete, they’ll be able to quickly and confidently answer customer enquiries without having to go and actually look at what’s available out in the yard.

Being able to send out invoices and statements directly from K8 by email has made this job much quicker and easier. I used to have to print them out and put them in the post!

Our customers have also told me that this is more convenient for them too. I’m also looking forward to further time saving benefits when implementation is complete - including automatic ordering when minimum stock levels are reached.

Lee Peters - Director at Lakeside Timber