Build Supplies
Saving three working days a month and taking back control of stock and margin
Build Supplies is an independent builders' merchant based in Cornwall, serving trade and retail customers across the region.
Facing pandemic pressures, supply chain disruption and rapid operational change, they implemented Merchanter in 2021 alongside a new ecommerce website.
"Our staff love using Merchanter. The system makes every task quicker, easier and that bit less painful."
Mike Tregunna, Director, Build Supplies
The challenge
Build Supplies needed to modernise across the board - stock control, invoicing, pricing and delivery - at the same time as navigating pandemic disruption, staffing pressures and volatile material prices.
Their existing setup couldn't keep up: invoice errors were frequent, stock confidence was low, and too much time was spent on manual processes that should have been automatic.
They also wanted to launch an ecommerce channel, which required a system capable of connecting the online store to live stock and pricing data without creating a separate workload to maintain it.
How Merchanter helped
Three working days saved on invoicing every month
Pricing accuracy was a persistent problem before Merchanter. Manual price overrides were frequent, invoice queries took time to resolve, and reissuing invoices was a slow, manual process.
Merchanter's trade and retail sales functionality handles customer price terms automatically - reducing the number of overrides needed to near zero and cutting the time spent on invoicing significantly.
"Due to the multiple ways in which Merchanter can deal with customer price terms, we are saving at least three working days per month on invoicing and invoice issues, which makes a huge difference and really adds up across the year. The number of set prices that we have to override is now minimal and the ability to re-issue invoices to any customer within a few seconds saves real time." - Mike Tregunna
Stock control that reflects reality
Stock management was one of the biggest improvements Build Supplies saw after implementation. Stock confidence improved markedly - meaning fewer incomplete deliveries, fewer disappointed customers and a better handle on what was available before promising it.
Better stock control also had a direct operational benefit: more complete first-time deliveries reduced the cost and complexity of follow-up runs, a meaningful saving as fuel and operational costs were rising.
"The stock confidence and ad hoc stock countability has seriously improved our stock controls and internal processes for the way that we manage stock. There's still room for improvement but we have seen massive improvements in stock control and this will continue to improve." - Mike Tregunna
Margin maintained through a volatile market
With material prices changing rapidly through 2021, the ability to update product costs quickly and accurately was commercially critical.
Merchanter allowed Build Supplies to reflect rising costs in the system without significant administration - protecting margin at a time when many merchants were absorbing price increases before they'd noticed them.
"The ability to set product costs that reflect a rising market with such little administration has definitely maintained and improved margins. Merchanter has made a massive saving to our business, and improved our profitability significantly." - Mike Tregunna
Ecommerce connected to the same system
Build Supplies launched an ecommerce website alongside Merchanter, with the two systems connected from the start. Web orders arrive in Merchanter alongside trade counter and phone orders - no separate system, no manual transfer of order data.
The site has driven new customer enquiries and opened up product areas the business hadn't previously promoted, with online orders growing steadily since launch.
"We see the site primarily as our shop window, and it's definitely helping to attract new customers." - Mike Tregunna
A system the whole team uses
Ease of use was a recurring theme across the Build Supplies team. New staff were trained to competency within a couple of weeks, and day-to-day feedback from the team has been consistently positive — which matters operationally, because a system people avoid using quickly stops reflecting reality.
"We have managed to train new staff to competently use the system within a couple of weeks and they enjoy using the system day to day. Our staff love using Merchanter - they comment on how easy it is to use and generally, other than the odd bug or niggle, I hear nothing bad about the system." - Mike Tregunna
