Case Study
Yarrows Aggregates.
As a supplier to some of the UK’s most well- known builder’s merchants, construction firms and private customers, Yarrows specialise in a wide range of building, recycled, decorative and specialist aggregates.
Sector
Construction
Founded
2002
“Spectrum’s expertise in Business Intelligence means that we now have a system that has transformed our daily stock ordering process, saving valuable time in reducing manual tasks.”
Company Names
Yarrows Aggregates
Location
Yorkshire & Lincolnshire
Website
Objective
Managing stocks of many thousand tonnes of aggregate materials, Yarrows wanted to automate mundane manual processes to speed up invoicing, gain control over stock levels and make for a more efficient way of handling deliveries and collections.
The Company
As a supplier to some of the UK’s most well- known builder’s merchants, construction firms and private customers, Yarrows specialise in a wide range of building, recycled, decorative and specialist aggregates.
Challenges
- Requirement to reduce the reliance on manual assessment of stocks
- Gain control of stock reordering processes
- Need to speed up invoicing runs
- Gain quick access to archived documents and reduce physical paper storage
Yarrows Aggregates take immense pride in the high quality of their products and wanted to introduce innovative information and document management technology into their state-of-the-art processing facilities.
The Solution
Yarrow’s initial point of interest was around Spectrum’s expertise in world-leading Business Intelligence and Data Visualisation software, Qlik™. Yarrows were having trouble keeping track of stock levels after orders were placed, the product was picked and then weighed in readiness for delivery. The introduction of advanced drone technology meant that data could be collected on stock levels to estimate tonnage. This was then fed into stock records and, together with integration into Sage 200, Spectrum was able to utilise Qlik to visualise the various elements of data in a number of easy to understand dashboards. This now allows for far closer monitoring of stocks and hugely influences the reordering process, ensuring Yarrows always have optimum stock levels. Qlik also calculates the correct rates to be used when supplying specific customers, again based on stock levels, saving the customer’s Finance team a substantial amount of time each month by avoiding the mundane analysis of spreadsheet in data – and saving Yarrows the effort of processing price queries.
Phase two of Spectrum’s project was to revolutionise the weighbridge ticketing process using document management tools, Therefore™ and Spindle™. After redesigning the weighbridge slips and applying a barcode, tickets can be signed, scanned using our Canon hardware, labelled and digitally stored. Then, when an invoice run takes place in Sage 200, an invoice can be generated and all related tickets can be retrieved for sending to the customer. This improves cash flow as the cost breakdown and evidence is being provided at the point of invoice – drastically reducing the number of invoice queries.
Automated Scanning and Storage of Tickets
Automation of Mundane Accounting Tasks
Visualisation of Crucial Information
Barcode Creation and Scanning
An Insight into tomorrow’s workplace.
“We’ve gained in so many ways. Print-related costs have been substantially reduced, we have far fewer devices, which are more flexible and resilient, and we have the right machines in the right places. All of this allows us to focus on our own business without having to worry about print.”
DirectorYoungs
"*" indicates required fields
