Read real examples of how these small UK&I distributors saved hours, gained better stock visibility and answer customers queries faster.
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If you run a distribution branch, manage stock or oversee customer service, you need to know one thing before investing in new technology.
Will it make your day easier and improve results within at least the next 6 to 12 months?
Across UK and Ireland distributive trades face daily pressures to increase revenue and tighten process efficiency is a constant looming shadow:
The businesses solving these challenges are your competitors. They’re replacing uncertainty and disconnected processes with a single, digital source of truth for all their stock, customer queries, financial reporting, pricing, warehouse management, and deliveries.
Here’s what efficient actually looks like in practice.
Order amendments, pricing changes and delivery updates are an everyday reality in distribution. Especially in an environment where you’re regularly moving large quantities of variable SKUs, sometimes under extremely tight deadlines.
For teams using multiple disconnected systems, this still means opening individual orders, editing line-by-line, reprinting documents and hoping nothing is missed.
EH Smith changed that.
With Klipboard, we developed a mass amendment ability within the projects module. We can now identify a project, select the changes that need to be made and use that application to bring up all those orders and associated lines.
This enables us to change data, such as dates and pricing, in a single mass amend grid before processing and regenerating the paperwork in one go. This development has saved dozens of man hours per month in the team and has been really well received.
James Cave, Senior Business Analyst at EH Smith
Dozens of man hours per month.
Multiply that across hundreds of staff and many locations, that’s a lot of time that can be refocused elsewhere – in revenue and profit driving activities, or towards strengthening customer relationships that keep them returning time and again.
If your team is still manually reworking orders, that hidden time cost is already hitting every part of your business, not least your bottom line.
A lack of accurate and instant stock visibility has an immediate impact on margin and customer satisfaction, even if not initially obvious. Inaccuracies increase ten-fold when stock takes are done infrequently and manually.
When long-standing customers place orders that cannot be fulfilled due to incorrect availability data, they don’t wait, they go elsewhere.
They rely on you to supply the materials and tools for their important jobs - this shouldn’t be left to chance.
When you can’t see accurate availability across locations, you:
Firwood Timber turned this reality on its head.
We’d been relying on paper trails and old habits for far too long. We realised it was time to make changes, not just to keep up with competitors, but to make life easier for our staff and customers.
Previously, I’d have to wait for an annual stock take to know what we had. Now, I can check availability at each branch instantly. It’s made everything so much easier and cost-effective.
Klipboard has given us the tools to compete and grow. We believe that considering how many customers we have now, it’s an essential system.
Steve Neary, Area Branch Manager at Firwood Timber
If you’re responsible for branch performance, instant availability across locations is no longer a luxury, it’s vital. And control directly impacts revenue, working capital and customer confidence.
Customers in plumbing, heating, electrical, and building trades expect immediate updates - not later in the afternoon or after someone checks in on drivers.
At E. Tupling, total visibility is now the daily norm.
With ERP One, we’re all aware of everything happening in the business.
If customers want an update on their delivery status, we can give them that immediately without looking through the paperwork to find the proof-of-delivery.
Chloe Watkinson, Customer Services Supervisor at E. Tupling
That single change immediately:
If your team is still searching for order information in mounds of paperwork or across multiple systems to answer simple delivery queries, the friction is visible to customers even if it feels normal internally.
A centralised view of all orders is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s essential.
Disconnected systems create daily frustrations:
This fragmentation slows onboarding for new employees and increases the risk that orders are missed or delivered inaccurately.
Eyre & Elliston consolidated its systems and completely changed how it operates.
A key benefit of ERP One is that it’s so easy to use. When new people join the business, they often say that ERP One provides twice as much information as other software they’ve worked with previously. It has really paid dividends for us.
ERP One has taken over all our business functions, from stock management, point of sale, and accounts. We don’t use any other software. We don’t need anything other than ERP One to successfully run our business.
David Monteith, Commercial Systems Manager at Eyre & Elliston
For operational managers, this means:
In the next 6 to 12 months, if you’re hiring, expanding or tightening margins, system simplicity becomes a competitive advantage.
Klipboard ERP One helps your entire business operate consistently and with greater accuracy.
But for those doing the day-to-day work that matters, this translates into:
Most importantly, it frees your staff to focus on what they do best: providing your customers with specialist materials and tools to complete their work effectively.
The distributive trade businesses already using ERP One aren’t using it to simply track stock, it’s a tool to strategically position them as a leader in your industry - providing consistent order fulfilment every time.
If you’re feeling the pressure of fragmented systems and stock uncertainty amongst mounting orders and increasingly complex customer demands, the practical question is simple:
What would your working week look like if those obstacles disappeared?
If you want to see exactly how ERP One supports branch managers, operations teams, customer service, and commercial systems in real distribution environments, book a meeting and see it in action.
Being a leader in your field shouldn’t require endless project management, prolonged consultations, or the growing pains of multiple new tools.
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