Retail Case Study

Builders Merchant Sheen Lane invested in Kudos to cut queuing and increase profits.

Sheen Lane is a typical busy builder’s merchant, selling an assortment of building supplies and holding over 2500 lines of stock.

With a team of five working at the site, they have over 100 account customers and have been running Kudos’ software since 2006. In that time, the manager, Mark, has seen significant savings in both time and money.

Before Kudos, it was common to have long queues in the shop – now turnaround at the till has been drastically improved. “Having Kudos running the till has cut serving customer time by 75%. It’s just so much quicker” comments Mark. “Having all the stock details stored on one central system means goods can be quickly looked up and scanned through the till. Customers don’t have to wait and the staff’s time is freed up to do other things.”

Sheen Lane also saw improvements to general profitability. At the till, goods are charged to customer accounts at the touch of a button, and then Mark prints the invoices at the end of the month. It’s accurate and saves them money.

“I couldn’t put a figure on how much the system has saved us, but it would be a lot of money!”

Mark – Manager

With Kudos’ software, they can be sure that every sale is charged. “It used to take me over two days a month to work out the account customers bills and send them out. Now it takes me 15 minutes with Kudos!” comments Mark.

They buy better too. Orders used to be placed for goods from suppliers that weren’t necessarily the most competitive. “We simply didn’t have time to check out the prices” said Mark. With one central system handling all the stock prices and the suppliers, Sheen Lane can now order far more economically. “I can take a look and see who does it cheapest straight away. There’s been a large cost saving as we are buying better and more efficiently.”

The staff find Kudos easy to use. Mark likes the margin display at the point of sale. “It’s useful to be able to see what we are making on an item” he comments. He uses the main reporting function within Kudos every day to see a snapshot of sales and average sale value. “You know where you’re at, what you should be taking and it’s easy to see exact figures of how we are performing.” said Mark.

Derek, the owner, comes in once a month to print statements and allocate payments on accounts. “He’s very happy with Kudos” says Mark “I couldn’t put a figure on how much the system has saved us, but it would be a lot of money!”