Following four years of rapid growth, tool manufacturer Caldwells is implementing a new ERP system from Access Supply Chain to support the future development of the business.

Based in Warrington, Cheshire, Caldwell's history goes back to 1770.  It is still a family business and the current managing director, Andrew Caldwell, is seventh generation. The company manufactures a wide variety of professional hand tools from hammers to scythes and axes to shovels. In 2003 it moved from a wholesale model of distribution to direct sales and turnover grew from £3 million to £5.5 million. It's existing IT system was unable to cope with the demands of a rapidly expanding business so Caldwells selected Access Supply Chain as a replacement.

Andrew says, "Access Supply Chain will give us much greater control over the business and will help us improve customer service levels. It will remove the need for all our various subsystems and spreadsheets and integrate everything so the same information is visible to everybody."

Caldwells sells to 'blue-chip' merchants such as Screw Fix and Wickes, which in turn, sell to the building, gardening and fencing trades.  The company has more than 1,500 SKUs (stock keeping units) and although much of its product range is manufactured at its own factory, it also now imports some products and components from the Far East.  Business is subject to seasonality too - for instance, sales of garden tools increase in the spring; agricultural tools in the winter. 

With an increasingly complex business, Andrew expects the new Access system to help improve forecast accuracy.  "It's all about customer service and making sure you've got the right stock; if you get it wrong, you can be out of stock for six to seven weeks. Access Supply Chain will help make sure that when a distributor orders something, it will be on their shelves within a couple of days."

Caldwells has a reputation for providing high quality tools which last for a long time even under heavy use - three Caldwell shovels, in perfect condition, were recently excavated from a First World War trench in France.  This quality - plus a certain 'Made in Britain' cache - has opened up a sizeable US mail order market (15 per cent of turnover now comes from outside the UK) and Andrew says Access Supply Chain is perfectly designed to develop with the business as it grows and diversifies. "I like the modular nature of the software; there's lots of functionality you can add at a later date, like CRM and barcoding for the warehouse.  You don't need to do it all at once; you can take it in bite-size chunks."

He says that probably the greatest immediate benefit of the system is the hardest to quantify at this stage.  "Winning new customers is one thing but if you don't deliver a certain level of service, you can't expect to keep the business; there's an almost intangible benefit from the software because we expect to see an upswing in orders just because we will be able to handle them better and provide better stock levels."
 
The system is expected to go live in October.