Holt JCB

Leading distributor of new and used JCB equipment

Company Overview

Holt JCB Based in Avonmouth, Holt JCB is a privately owned reseller of new and used JCB machinery. It also has the JCB franchise for construction, agricultural, industrial and waste machinery as well as JCB attachments, parts and service for the South West of England and South Wales. Holt JCB operates three service regions, with experienced service supervisors in each of the company’s three major depots.There are 58 mobile service engineers working for the company, with trained engineers based at each depot. Each has the extensive knowledge and experience of the particular support requirements needed in the various markets in which the company trades. As well as the three major depots in Port Talbot, Exeter and Bristol, the company has five further depots throughout the region.

The Situation

Since 1979, Holt JCB has experienced substantial growth in its quest to become the key provider of new and used JCB machinery to the building and waste disposal trade.With an ambitious plan to increase turnover from its 2005 figure of £75m, a key part of recent company strategy focused on a complete review of the accounting system.With an increasing number of transactions, it was of vital importance that data was easy to get into and out of the system – which was becoming difficult with Kerridge, the standard software used in the automotive industry.

The Requirements

Richard Briere, Financial Director, comments,“We had lots of processes built around a system that was outdated. People had developed their own, inefficient ways of working around the software, which was fine just to ‘get by,’ but we wanted to live up to our corporate objective to grow our business by delighting our customers, so something had to change as we were not giving the speed of service that we wanted.” He continues,“Our existing system didn’t have an open-data structure, so it was difficult to analyse information. If we wanted to run a report, for example, the data would need to be extracted manually and then re-keyed. It was part of the rationale when looking for a new system that it was based on SQL server – we knew this was the key to gaining the integration and capacity that we required.” Key to this integration was the link to several third-party applications, including an in-house web portal for the online trading of parts. In addition, the company needed job costing functionality, since each machine that comes in is treated as a separate project – with full integration, it would be possible to see all the information about that project in one place.

Search for a System

Once Richard had set the budget for the new system, he could more easily decide which software packages to target. Option one was an upgrade to Kerridge Revision 8, which was discounted almost automatically as it didn’t offer the database structure that the company required. Sage was then considered, along with several solutions from mid-sized software houses. Richard drew up a list of requirements, sent out a request for information and then met with each.All companies then ran demonstrations of the software so that Richard could assess how well they matched his initial requirements.

He praises Access Accounting’s Dimensions solution, commenting that Access, in his opinion,“was the only company that could offer a true SQL database.” He continues “We knew that whoever offered this, at the right price,we would go with.” During this period, Richard was also impressed by his Access Specialist Centre, who gave him excellent support.“On all the areas that were important to us, our queries were well-answered.”

The Implementation

Richard and the Specialist Centre then worked together to form an implementation plan. On the technical side, Citrix needed to be enabled in order to draw the data from the various depots. Seemingly small issues, such as connecting the system with the company’s dot matrix printers, were all thought out and planned in detail.

To ensure the system had the best possible chance of gaining user acceptance, individual working processes were analysed and the system customised to fit.With this depth of preparation, it was no surprise when the implementation went smoothly – and quickly. Richard continues,“We closed down the old system after breaking up for Christmas, imported the information within two days, and we were raising invoices for the start of the New Year! Our Access representative was on-hand at all times while we trained key users, who then had the confidence to roll-out this knowledge to their teams.”

Bespoke Benefits

Richard started to feel the benefit of the Access solution almost straightaway. “Having instant access to information and stored procedures means that all our records are accessible when we want them.The inter-relational file structure means that re-keying is no longer necessary – and we can customise the information to create the reports we want.Without the Access solution – including Microsoft SQL Server – this simply wouldn’t have been possible.” Key to Holt’s system is the Costing module within Dimensions (known as Vehicle Stock Book, or VSB) that has been customised to allow for in-depth views of information, so that staff can log in and see the data related to each project, from parts usage to customer and supplier details, and more.

Future Confidence

With a plan to grow by both organic and acquisition routes, the future of Holt JCB is positive, yet increasingly complex. Richard concludes, “In the future, the aim is to take on increased customer demands without taking on any more staff. Since installing Dimensions, we’ve already managed 20% more business without taking on any more people, so I’m confident that Dimensions will keep up with us.”

Benefits

Visibility – the Vehicle Stock Book (VSB) allows managers to access all the information associated with each project quickly and easily, leading to better decisions based on instant reporting and better visibility of budgets.
Time savings – Integration with third-party applications including websites and multi location datasets has put an end to time-consuming re-keying of data.
Future proof – Microsoft SQL Server is at the heart of the system, and has limitless capacity, so can grow with the increasing number of transactions without losing processing power.