Edgar Brothers

Success Stories

Distributors

Edgar Brothers

Customer: Edgar Brothers

What we did: Implemented K8

Implementing K8 to support future growth

Established in 1947, Macclesfield-based Edgar Brothers is a leading distributor and retailer of firearms and ammunition. The company is now preparing to implement K8 with a go live scheduled for January 2016. Edgar Brothers’ customers include shooting sports retailers, shooting grounds, police and defence sectors, professional and leisure customers. Company needed to replace their existing OneOffice system. It served the business extremely well since 1998 and supported considerable growth, however K8 had better fit for the family-owned business moving forward.

Forward-thinking company

Emma Burgess, Operations Director said, “Although our OneOffice system has supported our business very well – a six-fold increase in ten years, we were falling behind getting the most from our systems. Workarounds and the use of third party software have become necessary. As a forward-thinking company, this is not how we want to run the business.”

Need for investment

Realising the need for systems investment – Edgar’s staff needed more capable and advanced functionality to do their jobs and to improve business efficiencies in key areas. “With our trusted Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) partnership, we focussed on the business case for K8. We had to address some pressing requirements, notably integrated management information, warehouse management and procurement applications.”

Edgar Brothers has chosen to design a complete new business operation around K8. “The time was right to make a fresh start, revise our ISO9001 Quality Management System and steer towards making the best use of K8’s capabilities.”

Learning about K8’s capabilities

The K8 project began with the Discovery phase - the first part of METIS, the KCS implementation methodology. The KCS team ran several, in depth ‘learning’ workshops focussing on different areas of the system’s business processes and established the basis for the system set-up. “The workshops highlighted K8’s considerable time-saving opportunities and efficiencies especially in procurement and warehousing along with the use of hand-held devices and bar codes.”

A team effort for the best results

Edgar Brothers said that “The whole project is a team effort and everyone is totally committed to achieving the best result. We are fortunate to have like-minded, enthusiastic and ambitious employees, departments are taking responsibility for their own system applications and have their own ‘pot of gold’ to aim for.”

A platform for future growth

Targeting some clear benefits, they Edgar Brothers are confident that the system will meet current needs now and be a platform for future growth. Having robust, effective and efficient systems will enable them to maintain its successful development and provide staff with the means to take the business forward. “Although it may not have been so a few years ago, we now have the capabilities to make K8 work for us.”

Edgar Brother’s K8 project has now passed through the METIS Discovery phase - a learning process that highlighted the system’s time-saving opportunities. Now embarking on a comprehensive staff training programme for the award-winning ERP software Edgar Brothers will use a train the trainer approach to develop the required competencies and system knowledge. K8 will go live in January 2016 to coincide with the company’s financial year end.

Highlights

Identified as best time for K8 migration
Learning workshops to build system knowledge
Comprehensive, structured training programme
K8 is giving staff the tools they need
System ‘gain’ objectives for each department

K8 will deliver everything we need on a single platform and we will be supported by an implementation team with experience of both systems. Sharing knowledge between the two platforms will be enormously beneficial.

- Emma Burgess, Operations Director