Howdens completes high-speed K8 trading system rollout

Howdens Joinery rolls out Kerridge Commercial Systems K8 trading software in record breaking time - an amazing 40 depots a week at its peak, completing 450 depots in a year. Galiform subsidiary Howdens Joinery Co. was founded in 1995. By the end of 2008, the company was achieving a turnover of over £790m, operating out of 450 depots across England and Wales. It employs around 5,750 people in manufacturing, sourcing, logistics and depots. Howdens is underpinned by its strong entrepreneurial culture; the inherent growth in its depot portfolio; close relationships with its builder customers; the breadth of the market it serves and the quality and range of its products. Core customers are local builders. Howdens help them to sell, design, install and finish the job quickly and profitably.

In less than fifteen years, Howdens has grown to become the UK's leading supplier of kitchens. Last year the company provided around 4 million kitchen cabinets, 2 million cabinet doors and 400,000 complete kitchens to 234,000 building trade professionals. David Hallett, Chief Information Officer at Howdens, leads a team that was responsible for the selection and installation of the new K8 system. Headhunted as an experienced retail CIO, David was recruited with a specific brief to define and manage Howdens' IT strategy. David's career in retail IT began in 1982. Prior to his appointment by Howdens, he had acquired plenty of experience of fast rollouts for key brands including Dixons, Littlewoods, Argos and Laura Ashley. At Dixons Stores Group (which incorporates Dixons, Curry's, PC World, and The Link) David led a rapid rollout to over 1,000 stores. We talked to David about the decision to implement K8 in Howden Joinery depots and why the project had to happen at high speed.

"Aside from the existing SAP back office system in place, Howdens' legacy system, although very capable for its time, was well past its sell by date and beyond further development. We needed a modern system to be able to make future advancements to support the continuing growth of depots."
"Based on my experience of EPOS (electronic point of sale) systems, EPOS rollouts and the whole environment of store and branch systems, we needed a builders' merchant's system, not a retail system."

"There will always be application vendors with very detailed knowledge of specific areas, so you can make sure you get best-of-breed. The latest generation of software such as K8 makes integrating best-of-breed packages significantly easier than it used to be. You don't sit down anymore and write file transfers. You basically use these new integration tools which allow you to transfer information swiftly."

"Kerridge Commercial Systems had been introduced to us via Oracle with whom we had already formed a strong relationship. We asked Oracle to help us find a suitable 'depot system' and Oracle recommended we look at Kerridge Commercial Systems' K8 product." "K8 was selected due to the product's trade specific functionality and high standard of Kerridge Commercial Systems technical expertise." As the vast majority of Howdens' complex sales are on account, where codes may 'explode' out into several components, retail specific EPOS software designed for standard conveyor or hand-held product, paid for instantly by cash or credit card, simply didn't make commercial sense." "We wanted to see if there was a system out there that had been built specifically for the trade.

That's where Kerridge Commercial Systems came out absolute tops. The day we did the first demo it was very, very quickly apparent to me that the package 'ticked all the boxes'.

With K8, the majority of our requirements were standard. You could see that the K8 package had been developed with the trade in mind and that it wasn't an EPOS system that had been changed." "I've seen both sides… if we were going to try and adapt one of the major retail packages on the market, it was going to be the devil's own job. There were specific requirements we wanted, and with our knowledge of what was out there I knew there wasn't anything we could just grab. None of the leading EPOS packages for retailers could do anything like what we wanted it to do for our environment, for our trade customers."

"At Howdens we have a culture of pulling together to make things happen. The MD and his senior team were fully supportive and engaged in the project. Together we were able to galvanise the training department, second in additional support and with the support of the field management work with the depot staff themselves to test and develop the system and refine processes. When we came to escalate the roll out we had a nucleus of depot staff experienced in the product who could support their colleagues in other depots." "In my opinion, one thing that kills IT departments is keeping multiple systems going. A very good example was that in the middle of our rollout, the Chancellor decided to change the VAT rate." Well, all of a sudden you've got to do two changes. And those sorts of issues, when you're in the middle of a rollout, actually hurt you." "So although some people may find it daunting to do 40 locations a week, we found that it was actually better for our company not to experience a long, dragged-out process." "When you're doing rollouts like that, most of the time you introduce change-freeze. And another aspect for us was financial - while we were in the middle of a rollout, we were incurring both sets of costs… paying maintenance on old systems, software licences, etc., we were effectively doubling up." "What we did was start slow, prove it was ok, then go for it."
"I think they worked exceptionally well. You demonstrated that you talked our language. Whenever we mentioned a function, we didn't have to sit down and explain. You knew what we were talking about and it was obvious that you'd seen most of it before." "I think sometimes it seemed that some of your people appeared as though they were working for us. You need people to go native. But I think that's a measure of how well the people can work with you. We know a lot about your package now, but at the end of the day we're not the experts. And in a project like this, you're always going to get technical issues that are going to need to be sorted out by experts." "One thing I'd say about *Kerridge Commercial Systems is that you've got some hidden technical expertise, which a company should never underestimate. That's a measure of when I'm choosing a supplier, I want to see those technical experts that understand the issues and can get in there and sort them out."
"Howdens' previous system had been in place for twenty years, so they didn't have to think about how to use it - they didn't have to look at the screen, it was second nature to them." "Users fell into two distinct camps, some people, for example, had never used a PC, had never used a mouse and were unfamiliar with Windows, so it's fair to say that some of them have found it harder. As a contrast, younger members of staff, who have grown up with modern computers and Windows, have taken to it like ducks to water and don't find it an issue. Change is always frightening. People don't like it, so we've had to pay particular attention to give our depot staff lots of support. It's tough but you should never underestimate the effect that new systems have on every member of staff." "Now, after only a relatively short period of time, our depot staff have adapted to the new ways of working and are already seeing significant benefits compared to the old system."
"There's sufficient flexibility in the system that enables the individual depot managers, in keeping with the culture, to have freedom in making choices within the system themselves. Although we've seen them trained in certain ways, there are certain practices that they've built up themselves that are different, and that's great news. It plays to that culture where they are entrepreneurial, and we do give the depots a lot of autonomy."
"The biggest thing is, we're now on a platform which we can develop on and enable Howdens to grow. That's number one." "What benefits have we seen? Our stock visibility and our depot stock replenishment process have improved significantly. Another is the fact the we have a much better quote management and can convert the quotes to sales." *Since the management buy out in March 2010, ADP Commercial Systems has rebranded to Kerridge Commercial Systems.