At the time of the original case study, South Coast Building Supplies operated four builders' merchant branches across Dorset and Hampshire, employed around 80 people and had an annual turnover of approximately £25 million. The business was looking for a technology platform that could support its independence while giving it a stronger foundation for future growth.
Product naming note: South Coast Building Supplies originally implemented Intact iQ. The product has since been renamed GenetiQ. Historical product names are retained in customer quotes and references to reflect the customer's experience at the time.
Moving away from disconnected systems
Before implementing Intact iQ, one of South Coast Building Supplies' biggest challenges was the separation between its operational and financial systems.
Stock control and sales order processing were managed separately from financial accounting, creating extensive reconciliation work between two systems. The process was time-consuming and did not always provide the level of confidence the team needed in its financial information.
The previous systems also made it difficult to manage areas such as price increases, stock valuation and reporting effectively.
For South Coast Building Supplies, finding a provider that understood the builders' merchant sector was an important part of the decision.
Managing Director Tim Payne explains:
"From our perspective, working with a partner who truly understood our industry and its unique challenges played a big part in choosing Intact iQ. What we appreciated most was that Intact rarely said 'no.' Instead, they worked with us to find creative ways to achieve the customisations required to support how we run our building supplies business. This is what led us to Intact iQ over anyone else”
Bringing operational and financial information together
The move to Intact iQ gave South Coast Building Supplies a more connected way to manage its business, with operational transactions reflected within its financial processes.
For the team, this created greater visibility and made it easier to put procedures and checks in place, investigate what was happening across the business and identify where processes could be improved.
Louis Jenkins, Management Accountant at South Coast Building Supplies, says:
"Intact iQ allows us to establish procedures and checks that give us better visibility into what's happening across our business. With these procedures in place, we can interrogate them, identify areas for improvement, and make changes as necessary to keep things running smoothly”
Adapting the system around the business
The ability to configure the system around South Coast Building Supplies' processes also gave the team more control over everyday changes.
Tim explains:
"With Intact iQ, we can quickly adjust product prices or job volumes with just a few clicks. This responsiveness allows us to manage product shortages or price increases efficiently. For our customers, we added a new field on our statements to resolve a pain point for them. The system is just so easy to customise to how we work."
Rather than relying on development every time requirements changed, the team could make practical adjustments that reflected the way the business operated.
Improving transport and order visibility
Transport planning was another area where the business saw improvements.
For Sean Williamson, IT Manager at South Coast Building Supplies, the Transport Scheduler made it easier to plan and visualise daily routes, orders and deliveries.
Moving away from paper-based processes also reduced the risk of orders being lost or changes being missed, giving the team greater visibility over what needed to happen each day.
Replacing paper with easier access to documents
The business also moved away from its previous paper-based filing processes by digitally storing documents within the system.
Tim describes the difference:
"Everything is digitally stored now, making scanning and saving documents so much faster. Being able to locate files with just a few clicks rather than digging through misfiled papers eliminates so much hassle for us. Finding an invoice, and any related items takes seconds, not minutes. It just saves us so much time."
For users across the business, that meant less time searching for documents and faster access to the information associated with individual transactions.
Cutting reporting and pricing administration
Some of the clearest benefits came from processes that had previously required significant amounts of manual work.
Louis explains:
"We completed a full pricing reboot for several thousand products in just two weeks, a task that would have taken three months or more before. And Intact iQ’s data linking to Excel and custom report templates also saves us loads of time, reducing our monthly report preparation from 4-5 days to just one day."
These improvements meant the team could spend considerably less time preparing information and carrying out large-scale administrative exercises.
South Coast Building Supplies also gained easier access to information for margin control, order management and decision-making, reducing the need for employees to request additional reports or manually combine data from different sources.
Stock counting became more manageable too. Instead of relying solely on a cumbersome annual stock count, the team could use ABC-based counting to review inventory by supplier, product or category throughout the year.
Supporting South Coast Building Supplies' growth ambitions
At the time of the original case study, South Coast Building Supplies had ambitions to double the size of the business and saw its ERP platform as an important part of supporting that growth.
The implementation also gave the team some practical lessons for other businesses considering an ERP change.
Sean advised:
“Ensure your data is fully up-to-date and accurate before migrating to the new ERP system.”
Tim added:
“Be open-minded to process changes recommended by your knowledgeable consultants during implementation. We felt this open-mindedness resulted in a better quality implemented system overall”.
“From our perspective, working with a partner who truly understood our industry and its unique challenges played a big part in choosing Intact iQ.”
