Many businesses rely on systems to manage and organise their activities. For electrical wholesalers that means managing stock levels, sales, client purchase history and invoicing to name a few. However, there comes a point when using and relying on out-dated systems every day could be holding your business back. Our Recruitment Manager and industry expert, James Downing, shares his thoughts below.
Many electrical wholesalers stick with their current systems because change simply feels too risky. Will changing something so central to the business be too big of a distraction for management and their teams? Will it have a negative impact on sales as a result?
However, it’s important to bear in mind that system providers have done this all before. If you can find a modern provider that operates in your industry and listens to your concerns, you’ll be able to make the transition as smooth and successful as possible.
Yes, there is likely to be some teething problems that will need to be ironed out in the first few months, however if you are changing to a quality system, your business and trading should not be negatively affected.
One of the biggest reasons why electrical wholesalers should review and update their systems is to improve efficiency. Older systems tend to be very slow and much more complicated than the newer ones on the market. The latest systems also offer functions that hugely speed up key business processes.
Time certainly is money and using up-to-date business systems is one of the biggest time-savers for electrical wholesalers.
Using slow, out-dated systems every day can also be extremely frustrating for your team. They may feel that their performance and sales figures are held back by systems that are meant to help them. If they’re feeling this frustration on a daily basis, you may find yourself losing some great employees.
Introducing fast systems that have the functionality your team need will undoubtedly boost morale, productivity and results.
By improving efficiency and utilising modern functions and analytics tools, electrical wholesalers will increase their margin and turnover. Bonus Electrical’s Jamie Dawson has already seen how updating their systems is having a big impact on their business and margin. In a recent feature in the Electrical Wholesaler, he said:
“Since we’ve implemented the Luckins interface, we’ve seen an overall increase in our margin of 5%,” said Jamie. “Our turnover has grown from £3m to £10m in just six years. K8 is supporting that growth because it’s helping us to buy stock in the right quantities and to analyse our sales activities like never before. Recently, it also helped us quickly pull together the data we needed for a major tender bid which would have been a horrendous job using the old system.”
While sticking to the system you know may seem like the safe option, electrical wholesalers who are still operating in the past will find themselves falling behind their forward-thinking competitors.
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