Bonus Electrical 

About Bonus Electrical

Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS)’ K8 software has delivered cost and time savings across every area of business for Hull-based wholesaler Bonus Electrical. A key element of the software is its ability to provide the business intelligence that the management team needed, enabling them to analyse sales in more dept. Company spokesperson, Carl Dearing, said,' Unlike national wholesaling groups, who have very strict rules, Bonus is extremely flexible. We can do things for customers that no one else can.'

'Where local competitors may have one or two vehicles and offer a next day delivery service, we offer a shuttle service using a large fleet of vans. If we have what customers want in stock, the average delivery time is 90 minutes,' he explained.

In 2013 the Bonus management team was given the remit to double the turnover in two years and to make the business more profitable. At the same time, the incumbent software system was always crashing and the search for a new solution began.

We ultimately chose K8 because of the attitude of the KCS salesperson. He really listened to all our concerns and we felt he genuinely understood them. The fact KCS had implemented systems for other electrical wholesalers, whereas the other providers hadn’t, also gave us comfort.

Carl Dearing - Company Spokesperson at Bonus Electrical

Being able to send out invoices by email delivered the first immediate cost and time-saving benefits. And, on the trade counter, staff were able to access accurate pricing which speeded up service straight away.

The integrated POD system is invaluable and helps us deal with queries quickly and more efficiently. Some of our customers ask for a lot of PODs and I often used to waste time wading through files and scanning paper copies for emailing. Now, I just retrieve them from the system by entering the order number. The time this has saved us is incredible.

Jamie Dawson - Bonus Electrical

The system also started delivering the business intelligence that the management team so desperately needed and enabled them to start analysing sales in more depth.

'Now, at any time during the month, we can look at what a customer has spent over the last month, week or day,' said Jamie, ' We can break it down into product category and can spot patterns and trends that create questions for the sales team to answer.'

'For example whereas before they might have been satisfied with a lowish margin on the turnover created by a £50k a month customer, they can now analyse the individual items bought to see which are most profitable. This has enabled us to change some customer rebates to exclude certain products and has helped tweak our margin, ' he explained.

Bonus has recently upgraded their version of K8 to interface with Luckins. The interface works by Luckins loading their files into an FTP server for K8 to pick up. The Bonus team then imports the file, which updates their entire catalogue and products on stock in around 30 seconds.

The Bonus management team believes K8 has delivered cost and time savings across every area of the business. They are discovering new functionality within the system as each month passes, such as the logical way it manages stock locations and how it stores and automatically updates customer-pricing information.

Since we’ve implemented the Luckins interface, we’ve seen an overall increase in our margin of 5%. Our turnover has grown from £3 to £10 million in just six years. K8 is supporting that growth because it’s helping us to buy stock in the right quantities and to analyse our sales activities like never before.

At Bonus, our management team’s job is to constantly ask questions about what we’re doing and how we can do it better. This system has facilitated that massively.

Jamie Dawson - Bonus Electrical