Over the past decade, the holiday home business has grown significantly within the UK. In looking for new ways to compete in an increasingly competitive market, a growing number of manufactures have recognised the need to radically enhance their business management systems. Two of the leading domestic companies have found that the fully integrated SYSPRO ERP system from McGuffie Brunton is an ideal solution.
Supporting the Holiday Homes Industry
The camping, caravan and holiday home sub sector of the domestic holiday market has enjoyed solid and healthy growth over the past few years, and is now a £3b industry. In particular, the requirement for caravan holiday homes has seen a significant upward turn; the reasons behind this trend are a combination of the growing consumer trend for families to take second holidays in the UK, often choosing caravan park accommodation, the increasing number of consumers who view caravan holiday homes as an investment and rapidly improving park facilities.
The demand for these leisure homes, from caravan holiday homes to log cabins, is well served by a number of domestic manufacturers. But, as well as UK competitors, these companies, which are mostly SMEs, also face growing competition from importers. To meet the challenge, design and build quality have become key areas of differentiation, and as a result many holiday homes now offer extremely high levels of construction and modern amenities. However, other area of competition are now coming to the fore, including customisation; the need to provide not just high quality standard products, but exactly the holiday homes options that customers want, while maintaining cost competitiveness.
In adapting to satisfy these increasingly demanding customer requirements, and better manage growth, many UK manufacturers are now combining advanced design capabilities with more operation-wide improvements, including more effective business controls and efficient processes throughout the business, from rapid and accurate order processing to lower cost / higher performance manufacturing and on time delivery. To help drive the internal changes needed, the move to modern, more robust and some feature based IT systems is also on the agenda for the more forward looking companies; with leading manufacturers having already adopted the fully integrated SYSPRO ERP system McGuffie Brunton.
Dramatic Turnaround
ABI (UK) Ltd has seen a dramatic turnaround in its performance over the past few years. Systematic and far-reaching improvements in holiday home design, manufacturing quality, and customer service have seen the company win national holiday home design awards for two years running, and commission a second production line to keep pace with increasing demand. This recent success has been driven by a number of factors. A new management team and a move out of the touring caravan business to focus solely on the caravan holiday home market - where it has already established its position as a leading UK manufacturer to the holiday park industry - have been key. So have internal management and process improvements, including the implementation of the SYSPRO 6 system.
While initially introduced within its after sales operation, when the company was still producing the spares intensive touring caravans, the fully integrated sales, manufacturing, distribution and financial ERP system, has now been implemented throughout the business. In replacing the previous mix of independent and manual systems, ABI found immediate gains from establishing standardisation and data commonality across key business functions, along with eliminating a large amount of administrative re-keying of information, and associated errors. The company has subsequently benefited form a range of process efficiencies and new capabilities, including achieving far more co-ordination and discipline to the day to day running of key aspects of the business, especially in terms of manufacturing and inventory control.
Peter Davies, Financial Director explains, "Now that we are past the initial learning and implementation period, we are finding that the SYSPRO system is having an important impact throughout the business. In particular, within manufacturing it is providing an increasingly effective management tool in terms of improving efficiency, cost control and delivery."
A vital aspect of this have been the ongoing reductions in production waste and stock levels, despite increasing production and delivery target adherence.
"With the introduction of SYSPRO we have ensured the accuracy of our BOMs, and put in systems to review jobs and so maintain this data accuracy. This, combined with an effective inventory / stock control system, WIP tracking, better order forecasting and the integrated nature of the system, means that we now not only have accurate stock data but also far more effective control over stock levels, component purchasing and production," reports Davies.
He adds, "We now feel secure in only ordering what we need, eliminating waste and unnecessary stocks."
Effectively tracking production and WIP through SYSPRO also means that the company has more relevant data on production and labour times, and this is enabling it to look at more efficient production and better cost management.
Other areas where the implementation is delivering benefits include After Sales and Warranty. As well as improved spares stock management, the system enables warranty work to be effectively managed, from the creation of jobs and a separate MRP run, through to work being tracked using the WIP module. Also, warranty activity is fed through straight into the businesses general accounting system, so enabling these costs to be monitored. In terms of front-end processes, ABI is also now looking to new functionality within the SYSPRO system for improvements.
Building Success
Omar Woodbury, which manufactures environmentally friendly accommodation, including timber holiday lodges, has also turned to McGuffie Brunton and the latest SYSPRO system.
Having outgrown its existing site, the company set up a new factory 18 months ago. Increasing its lodge production was one factor in its growth, the other was the response to customer requirements for the supply and fit of complete interiors such as fully fitted bathrooms and kitchens, while still expecting short delivery time scales. It was faced with these growing business challenges - which effect every aspect of the operation from sales order processing to ensuring that all the wide ranging materials used in the construction and fitting of the timber homes are brought together at the right time - that led the company to abandon its old, inflexible, management systems.
As Paul Ingall, IT Manager of Omar Woodbury explains: "Because we use hundreds of different components for each order, it would be very easy to slip on delivery dates without the right type of IT system in place to control and manage our sales, production and inventory. In the past, it could take just one particular item like furniture, which we manufacture and has a long lead time, to prolong delivery timescales."
With the implementation of SYSPRO, the company's management has been able to progressively take firmer control over every aspect of the business. As well as improved sales order processing and component purchasing, this is helping ensure that the right stocks are in place to meet order delivery commitments.
In gaining these improvements, the company's first step was to utilise the flexibility and modularity of the SYSPRO system by first implementing the modules that could deliver the most immediate improvements. This included introducing the purchase order system for non-stock items, which Paul Ingall says they were able to use from day one, and instantly improved the tracking of critical deliveries. This was soon followed by the addition of sales order processing, the input and 'cleaning' of BOMs, the full running of MRP and the complete adoption of the purchase order system for over 2000 stock codes; covering everything required to fully fit out a house, from screws and nails to washing machines and fridge freezers.
Having now gained confidence and an appreciation for what the core system can deliver, the next stage for Omar Woodbury is the adoption of advanced functionality. The company has plans to install SYSPRO's Product Configurator module, which will enhance the often long and drawn out sales process. By helping to more rapidly and easily produce estimates and quotes for buildable configurations, so removing potential sources of confusion and error, and then automatically transferring agreed sales data into the sales order processing system, it is anticipated that the module will help deliver significant time and effort savings on both the part of the sales staff, and the customers.
However, before this, they are about to implement SYSPRO's CRM package, which is going to be extremely useful to the company in bringing islands of customer information together in one place. As Ingall notes, "It is our desire to have a single database of customers and contacts and one that is easily accessible, as opposed to being spread around the business. We would want to be able to handle after sales issues via one source and to have the ability to go to one page for one customer and to see all of the information from a financial or sales perspective."
The company is growing nicely into its SYSPRO system. But it is not just the technology that is proving a big success. Ingall is also very happy with level of support they are receiving from McGuffie's Manchester office. He concludes, "This might just be just a small thing, but if I cannot get through to McGuffie's support desk straight away, I can guarantee receiving a call back within ten minutes. Their staff are always helpful and very friendly. I really do think that it is a fantastic part of the McGuffie Brunton service".
