There was a requirement to manage the increased amount of stock and equipment the business needed to store. Through CLICK, Scolmore International supplies products to the electrical wholesale trade and a national chain of approved CLICK stockists, providing local availability of all product ranges.

As the business continued to grow, Scolmore International realised that in order to remain competitive within the market it was necessary to develop several key areas of the business, including CRM. Steve Taylor, General Manager at Scolmore International, comments, “The complicated IT upgrades and implementation process, coupled with a business move, presented a number of problems for us in terms of storing and accessing company, product and customer information. As one of the largest electrical accessory suppliers in the UK, we required an efficient and effective method of storing and quickly accessing this information.”

As well as selling a range of electrical products and accessories, CLICK also design and develop electrical products in-line with the latest legislation and compliance certification. Prior to installing the Sage 1000 system, Scolmore International was looking for a software package that could bring this side of the business up-to-date. The company was originally considering implementing the Microsoft Project software which would allow it to handle the design and management of these patented products from start to finish. However, following in-depth consultation with CPiO’s expert advisors, Scolmore International opted for the Sage 1000 package as it could produce the same results at a much lower cost, along with a full systems upgrade.

CPiO also introduced Scolmore to its Intellisell web trading solutions, designed specifically for the Sage end user. Scolmore’s management was very sceptical about the online opportunity for the company but pursued it under the leadership of Taylor, who comments, “I saw Intellisell as the ideal solution to really deliver true web sales. The Intellisell product delivered an easy to use, easy to update web front end that could suck product information and pricing directly from our Sage system and upload it to the website. Our customers could log on and see their own prices with a web discount applied, view stock levels and place orders directly on us via our Sage system.”