S&C Group
Leading supplier of cut timber and TV/ audio furniture
Company Overview
S&C Group of Knottingley,West Yorkshire, is a highly successful business: it is enjoying significant growth, which is set to boost its turnover by nearly 200 per cent inside two years. Its success belies its size – with just 80 employees, it counts blue chip multi-nationals among its customers.At nearly £26m, turnover is up from £14m in the previous year and is budgeted to exceed £40m next year.
When the company began in 1993, its focus was on cut-to-size sheet timber, which it continues to supply to this day to large DIY outlets, through national distributors, printers and the building trade. But the business has expanded far beyond its original goals.The firm has a highly successful TV and audio furniture manufacturing arm, which boasts household names such as Toshiba and Philips among its customer base, as well as high street retailers. It also has, a new
division which makes premium glass surrounds for televisions - an operation performed for major manufacturers worldwide. Its leading-edge design department has the capability to employ a range of materials to take any concept from prototype to full production and it is this ability to keep one step ahead of the market
that has enabled the company to secure significant competitive advantage.
In the last five years the company has established itself as a major supplier of specialist components for the audio visual market on four continents. It has formed joint ventures in the Far East which allows it to exploit its UK engineering expertise for rapid developments and small runs - switching to overseas, for higher volume production of some glass and plastic components once the product is established.
When Gareth Ackroyd joined the organisation as Finance Director, one of the first things he resolved to do was bring the business software up to speed:
“We used to be on a Sage system - Line 50 for accounts and the manufacturing package. We weren’t really using the manufacturing software to any great extent. In fact we didn’t use the stock control functionality at all. It had really become nothing more than a repository for bills of materials.” Production schedules were planned manually, which inevitably led to errors from time to time. “To underpin our drive to lean manufacturing, we knew we needed a solid MRP system,” says Gareth.
What’s more, he could see immediately that the accounting software was creaking under the pressure – it wasn’t suitable for a £14 million turnover business. “It just wasn’t sufficiently robust for what we wanted.”
So, S&C Group proceeded to find a solution. Its objectives were straightforward: it needed to streamline the manufacturing processes to reduce stock and improve purchasing. Better information on stock was vital, so real-time visibility of stock would be crucial within any new system. On the accounts side, the business needed to sharpen its processes too. “We had to be able to pull together a set of accounts far more quickly and efficiently,” says Gareth.“Even the production of monthly accounts required a full manual stock take, which was an incredibly time-consuming process.”
The Solution
Together with Phil Watson, Head of Production Planning and Purchasing, he began the search for a solution. They investigated what was available on the market and invited eight suppliers to demonstrate their software. Access Supply Chain rose above the others from the outset. “There were a number of factors that steered us towards Access,” recalls Gareth. Firstly, we felt confident our voice would be heard. This isn’t the case with many other suppliers – some wouldn’t be interested in solving an industry-specific problem for a firm of our size, whereas Access Supply Chain is always responsive.”
S&C Group had a tight schedule for implementation – another factor in the selection process. Gareth commented, “We were looking at a pretty short timescale. September to November is our busy time, so we wanted to be up and running well before then. Part of the attraction to Access was that they were committed to ensuring that our system would be up and running by 1st September.”
There was a good level of buy-in throughout S&C Group – everyone knew that improvements had to be made. “We’d reached a size where we couldn’t rely on spreadsheets and back-ofenvelope calculations any more, and everyone here was aware of that,” says Gareth. This positive response helped the implementation process to progress smoothly, particularly since S&C Group committed the necessary resources to the project.
S&C ran the Access Supply Chain system for a month before going live and data, such as bills of materials, was loaded on the system before switching across. Sales and purchase ledger information was switched over automatically when the system was ready to go live. “We took the opportunity to clean some of the data before switching across – and the result of all this good preparation was a very smooth transition,” says Gareth.
From the start, S&C Group could see that the Access Supply Chain system had the functionality and capability to help drive the business forward. “It has excellent links to Preactor, our scheduling system, and is fully integrated from start to finish. That was critical for us in terms of the system selection” says Gareth. Also, the system can easily flex to accommodate the different requirements of the three divisions. “The sheet timber work, for example, is a simple process but was incredibly difficult to pin down in terms of software control – now, we have a great solution to manage this aspect of our business.”
The benefits are already apparent. For Gareth’s finance department, speed and efficiency now underpin every process. “We can run accounts far quicker than ever before. For the end of month accounts, we no longer need to carry out a manual stock take – this alone probably saves us 30 or 40 man hours each month. In addition, our purchase ledger clerk probably spent a couple of days each month matching delivery notes for goods received accruals – it was incredibly labour intensive before, now it’s there at the press of a button.”
With an eye to the future, the group is anticipating further growth: “The sheet timber revenue is increasing 20 per cent year on year, and we expect to grow the furniture and glass parts of the business even more,” says Gareth. “We have all the functionality we need now and we’re confident we have a solid system to support every aspect of our business,” he concludes.
