Buck & Hickman go live on ADP K8 business management software

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Buck & Hickman is now live on the K8 system across its 32 branches and at its National Distribution Centre. Buck & Hickman is the UK’s leading distributor of tools, maintenance and health and safety products. K8 is the advanced integrated trading system for the building supplies and associated industries.

The BSS Group plc, a leading distributor to specialist’s trades acquired Buck & Hickman from Premier Farnell PLC in 2007. Following the acquisition, the Group urgently needed to review the existing Buck & Hickman systems. The requirements included a need for a system that would be able to integrate seamlessly with its other enterprise applications, such as the newly implemented STEP (Stibo catalogue’s software that manages product content) and a new e-commerce web solution from Snow Valley and Mercado.

Mike Spalding, BSS Group IT Director stated: “We had chosen K8 as the strategic transaction system for the BSS Group and once we had confirmation that it had the necessary integration capabilities, we made the decision to deploy K8 throughout Buck & Hickman. The pressure was on to complete the interfaces, install K8 and be ready to move off the legacy Farnell systems within 18 months of the acquisition. I am delighted to report that the objective has been met, a real credit to the hard work and commitment of our staff and the ADP team.”

The integration process was achieved using K8’s powerful DX (Data Exchange) module. Trading with the K8 solution meant all the existing interfaces could be incorporated seamlessly, linking data through K8 creating a completely integrated environment. All the interfacing modules are now generating sales orders into K8.

Howard Luft, Managing Director of Buck &Hickman, said: “We are using a wealth of K8’s functionality throughout the business including full ‘Electronic Funds Transfer’ (EFT) in credit, debit and purchase cards. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is submitting sales orders and invoices generated within K8 across to trading partners. These facilities are saving us time and money and help us to provide a better service to our customers.“

Buck & Hickman’s National Distribution Centre is benefiting from ADP’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) to control movement and storage of stock. Hand held terminals (HHT’s) connected via wifi are accessing K8 to provide more accurate booking-in and put-away processes. The K8 Contact Management System (CMS) has also been implemented to help manage some of Buck & Hickman’s business processes.

Ian Bendelow, Managing Director, ADP Commercial Systems: “The Buck & Hickman implementation proves that ADP Commercial Systems and K8 offers a ‘best of breed’ solution which provides an out of the box fit for our customers who then gain a quicker return of investment.”

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