“IQ Retail is a secure and robust system, that’s flexible and can tailor to all of my needs. With IQ POS, our available stock information and accuracies have tremendously improved.”
Anand Thaker, Owner at Abhani Commercial Ltd
Abhani Commercial Ltd, a second-generation family-owned business, offer general hardware-type products with a specialist focus on plumbing solutions. The industry-leading hardware business run a central operation, with a large warehouse and trading branch in Mombasa, Kenya, supplying products throughout the country and have been doing so for over 35 years.
Traditionally Abhani relied on manual processes to manage their operations. Given the way the world is going, Abhani realised a need to move over to a more digital way of running their business.
Additionally, as they grew, they required instant access to real-time stock levels. IQ Retail seemed to tick all the boxes and offered all the features that Abhani was looking for, in addition to having a good reputation and offering a cost-effective solution.
Since they moved over to IQ Retail, they had instant access to relevant sales data and stock levels, without having to physically be on the premises and without human resource.
Abhani wanted a system that was easy to use and that catered to their entire workflow, so it had to include all of their operational processes. The business serves both retail and wholesale types of customers so they required a system that could support these specific business needs.
One such example is that Abhani’s wholesale customers have individual pricing agreements in place and IQ was able to cater to those requirements. A pricing matrix is maintained so each customer is provided with a consistent price per product which differed from customer to customer. That also meant Abhani was able to empower their staff to offer customer-specific discounts or prices, eliminating the need for supervisors to override certain discounts on a sale-to-sale or customer-to-customer basis.
With Abhani’s progressive vision to grow along with their aim to move to a more digital way of running their business, they were excited to have found a software provider that continuously invests in the technology and in its people. Working with a local organisation that has global backing has many benefits, including a continuous investment in product improvement.
Many businesses, who make use of global service providers, often need to deal with global offices instead of working with local representatives. This often leads to a disconnect. One of the big benefits of IQ Retail is that they are part of a global organisation but have an office in Kenya with their divisional head office in Cape Town. This ensures that customers have access to in-person support and local consultants.
Abhani Owner, Anand Thaker, was looking for a couple of key features in a new ERP system. It had to include the following:
- The system had to be fully integrated
- It had to be user-friendly
- They wanted access from anywhere at any time
- They wanted to segregate responsibilities and provide user-specific access, empowering people within their specific roles
- They required a system where they could delegate responsibilities, but retain visibility of all activities
Anand said, ‘We were looking for a digital Point of Sale system that would be good enough and that would be able to do the job properly. We came across IQ Retail and their POS system had everything we were looking for and more.’
Anand further explained, ‘We were running on a manual system for our sales. It was quite tedious to calculate prices and so forth. Having computerised our system with IQ POS, it reduced a lot of manual work. Sending quotes is now much easier with the ability to use WhatsApp, as well as converting quotes and sales orders into final invoices. Looking for old invoices is also much easier compared to a manual system. When customers want a copy of their invoice, it is easy to send via email or WhatsApp.’
IQ POS is a user-friendly Point of Sale system with the option of fully integrating with IQ Business and IQ Enterprise. It also offers additional powerful functionality, such as including airtime, account, or suspended sales and shifts and cash-up reporting to mention a few.
Anand commented, ‘IQ Retail is a secure and robust system, that’s flexible and can tailor to all of my needs. With IQ POS, our available stock information and accuracies have tremendously improved. The system enables us to identify fast moving stock, we can easily check our sales as well as viewing the profitability to date.’
Anand added, ‘If I can offer some advice to any family-owned businesses, I would definitely suggest going digital. It makes running your business so much easier and it will streamline processes, which can assist with some of the tedious day to day tasks, freeing up time to focus on other areas of the business.’
IQ POS’s bespoke functionality has provided Abhani Commercial Ltd with:
- Reconciliation of stock quantity movement
- Email statements and invoices to customers
- Customised reports and advanced filtering engine
"It is gratifying to recognise how businesses are benefitting from our digital solutions and professional consulting. We aspire to provide value to our clients." - Trevor Dorasamy, General Manager at Kerridge Commercial Systems, Kenya.
