The platform will initially be for Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland customers only
Independent merchant Haldane Fisher has launched its first e-Commerce platform in time for a predicted house improvement surge as many opt to stay at home during the holiday period.
The platform, built by eCommonSense, will initially be for Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland customers only. Later this year, they will be going live for customers in England and the Isle of Man.
Future-proofing the business involved sorting out multiple challenges that were all dependent on each other. These included sorting out the product data for 10,000+ products, simplifying the pricing structures and changing to a new version of their ERP system that allowed full integration with the back office.
For many builders’ merchants, working to resolve all of these simultaneously would have been too much but the board of Haldane Fisher recognised the importance of having a class-leading eCommerce solution in place.
Stephen Rooney, Haldane Fisher’s Marketing Director, said: “Our first attempts at websites showed us that if the digital solution is not fully integrated with the back office, it is not worth doing due to the time and resource needed to administer. So when we made the decision to go online, we of course looked at other providers but the more we talked with eCommonSense, we realised it was its platform that would deliver what we needed.”
Haldane Fisher is one of the leading independent suppliers to the construction industry with 19 branches across the UK and Ireland. It started this journey to future proof its business about 18 months ago. It went live with its new ERP software, Kerridge Babbage, in March 2020 just as the COVID-19 crisis shut down the world.
Rooney added: “The pandemic made us realise the amount of business that we were missing if we had been live with the website. Overall though we came through in good shape – we adapted our business model, and we evolved.”
Initial financial projections are incredibly modest, given the many uncertainties with the economy. It expects web revenues to be about three per cent of its total turnover (£77 million). Haldane Fisher is adopting a strategy that is a hybrid approach with both branches and online working hand in hand.
“We’re confident that we have now got a robust website as a result of all the hard work that all sides put in throughout the process," added Rooney.
“Our staff are all enthusiastic - we have nominated an eCommerce Champion in each of our branches. Suddenly there is a lot of fresh interest and we feel the collective excitement of opening a new virtual store.”
