LEW Electrical Distributors is one of the UK’s leading independent electrical wholesalers, offering customers the best possible experience, product choices, quality and value. They had implemented an ERP solution and were experiencing protracted issues implementing the product and managing the supplier. Software and Change supported LEW to stabilise the implementation in six months, and build a roadmap to value realisation.
LEW delivers a five star service to customers
LEW is the only choice of electrical wholesaler for their loyal customers. Founded in 1993, the business has grown on the strength of their unmatched customer service, offering industry-leading electrical supplies, services and solutions. This customer review says it all:
“At Honest Security, we use LEW for all of our electrical purchases. These guys are the best; the staff is amazing, and they always offer the best prices in the industry. I personally have been using them for 15 years and would never go anywhere else. If I could, I would give more stars for this company.”
Daryl Goodall
ERP implementation was causing headaches
The company had consistently outperformed industry average, however the implementation of the new ERP, Orderwise, was constraining continued growth. The project had overrun, scope had been cut, and performance was suboptimal, affecting trading and the business bottom line. The leadership team was facing a decision whether to manage the new ERP and supplier to better performance, or look elsewhere.
When Software and Change were referred via a trusted advocate LEW had been considering the decision for 12 months. They had made some gains investing further time and budget in the product, however key areas of functionality were still far from optimal. The operation teams were offsetting the ERP shortcomings by boosting their own discretionary effort. They were starting to lose confidence in the solution and relationship after several false dawns.
A culture of collaboration, transparency and trust
LEW had driven the focus on the ERP implementation from CEO level. They had active weekly engagement on the project from the COO and CIO, recognising the importance of senior ownership and team engagement in the project.
They needed support from Software and Change to transition the product ownership to the business and the structure plus tools and techniques, to better manage the relationship with the ERP supplier.
Once Software and Change began working with LEW we helped to validate or challenge concerns, and worked to rebuild the relationship with the supplier and the business, prioritising actions by tying the ERP implementation back to business strategy.
Credit to LEW, the culture they have built is one of collaboration, transparency and trust. They all wanted to make it work, they just needed the confidence, structure, and plan to bring it about.
Key challenges were around ownership and accountability. Software and Change was able to re-draw those lines and deliver a clear priority list and ownership to make demonstrable and communicable progress that rebuilt the confidence in the ERP and the decision to implement it.
Quick wins and strategic gains
Software and Change’s approach was to first understand the facts, and assess the impact on the business in terms of progress against plan and strategy. We then focused on the key elements of the product that were required to drive that business strategy, understanding the gap between what had been intended at go live and the outcome.
We established where the accountability lay from a business, project and supplier perspective. We then built a plan to stabilise the product implementation, achieve the baseline objectives and finally begin to leverage the investment, achieving gains not possible on the legacy platform. Progress against that plan was communicated to rebuild the confidence of the business and improve the relationship with the supplier.
We focused on delivering quick wins that bought time for medium term and more strategic gains. We worked to build trust quickly with all parties, restoring faith and confidence in the product and the supplier relationship
Baseline objectives delivered in 6 months
LEW achieved a stabilised product delivering their baseline objectives for the implementation within 6 months, with a roadmap to leveraging the investment. KPIs like the speed of point of sale application performance was increased from 3-5 minutes to under 1 minute to transact a sale. The product was stabilised throughout the highest transactional volume times where previously the application had been freezing and dropping connection.
As the project moved to BAU, LEW began to focus their efforts on other areas of the business strategy like new acquisitions and office locations, confident the ERP could support. They have a structure for successful software product adoption on ongoing software product and supplier management.
