'Data is not only critical to help customers find the right product, but it is an invaluable tool for branch staff'
Launch date
April, 2020
Product range
12,000+
Branches
19
SECTOR
Builders’ and Plumbers’ Merchant
LOCATION
Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and England
BRANCHES
England: Garstang, Makerfield, Heckmondwike
Isle of Man: Douglas, Ramsey
Northern Ireland: Ballymena, Bangor, Belfast (x3), Coleraine, Enniskillen, Larne, Lisburn, Newry, Portadown (x2)
PREVIOUS CHALLENGES
- Back-office system did not allow digital integration.
- Website not mobile enabled and non-transactional.
- Overly complicated pricing structure.
- Product data needed organising.
FAVOURITE FEATURES
- Product Information Management (PIM) tool.
- Full integration with Kerridge Babbage back-office system allows customers to manage their accounts and reduce administration costs.
- Trade features that our customers value.
The Company
Haldane Fisher is one of the leading independent suppliers to the construction industry and is part of the Haldane Shiells Group, made up of Haldane Fisher NI, Haldane Fisher Isle of Man, Haldane Fisher UK and GE Robinson in North West England. The business has grown organically and through acquisition since it was founded by Bob Haldane in 1946.
The problem
The independent merchant had a website that was non-transactional and wasn’t mobile enabled, a back-office system that did not allow full digital integration, an overly complicated and opaque pricing system and product data that needed urgent attention.
Our early iterations of the website taught us that if the digital solution is not fully integrated with the back office, it is not worth doing due to the time and resource needed to administer. So, at that point, we knew that we would have to change our back-office trading system
The Solution
Haldane Fisher realised that they needed to change how they looked at everything and reach into all corners of the business. They re-engineered their processes rather than put the existing ones online, they invested heavily in sorting out their pricing system and they moved to a new ERP system Kerridge Babbage.
They also took on a digital manager, a digital business development director and someone to focus solely on product data.
The Benefits
The new website has led to improvements across the whole business and staff greeted it with the ‘collective excitement of opening a new store’. It proved to be invaluable through lockdown at a time when branches were either unable to open or only do so in a restricted way.
Similar Case Studies
Building digital right for builders’ merchants – read their digital transformation stories
Book a free phone consultation
If, like most people, you want to increase your eCommerce revenue but are not sure of what the best way is to go, then book a free phone consultation with Andy Scothern. Not only is he the founder of eCommonSense, he is also the digital and product data expert for the BMBI, so you’ll be in good hands!
eCommonSense founder and MD
English
Afrikaans
Albanian
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Georgian
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Maltese
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Sudanese
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Vietnamese
Welsh
Yiddish