Intact

Doyles of the Shamrock

Company Background

Doyle's of The Shamrock, a leading builder's merchants and hardware provider, has been trading for over 120 years. Established in 1884 by James Doyle, the Carlow based company is now in the hands of Michael Doyle, great grandson of James. Keeping an eye on market trends, Michael realised that the retail industry was developing rapidly and chose to concentrate his efforts in building up the hardware division to ensure the future success of the business. As a result of this strategy Doyle's has grown at a phenomenal rate into the major enterprise it is today, which currently employs 135 people across seven separate divisions.

The Need to Change

To facilitate the rapid expansion of Doyle's, the company relocated in March 2004 for the first time since 1884 to a new eleven acre site adjacent to the new bypass road in Carlow. As the company moved to their new premises, Doyle's also required an Accounting and Business Management system. Their existing package at the time did not provide the functionality and flexibility that was required to meet their needs as the business expanded. Doyle's needed a scaleable, mid range package with enormous scope that would grow with their needs well into the future. This led to the decision to implement INTACT into the company.

The Project and Implementation Process

The project commenced in January 2004, with INTACT's head consultant, meeting with key management personnel from Doyle's including Caroline King, the Group Financial Controller and Collette Buggy, Financial Accountant. During this meeting Doyle's key needs were identified and an implementation plan set out. Caroline comments "Our consultant could quickly see our needs. Coming from an accounting background he knew exactly what we required. He could see the difficulties we were having and worked closely with us to develop solutions to these".

The implementation plan was first put into action by extracting the data from the existing system and importing it into INTACT. The information was converted into the key areas such as Customers, Suppliers, Stock and Customer Price Lists. This was followed by a reconciliation of the imported data with the data from the old system.

When this initial process was complete, work then began on designing the various forms and reports required by Doyle's. Forms were set up to the company's specification and fonts and layouts were designed for reports such as invoices, credit notes, sales orders, purchase orders and quotations. Reports were also devised to display important information to key management personnel.

One of the main project aims was to ensure that all relevant users received maximum exposure to the system in advance of it going live. To enable this to take place training was split between two groups. Group one consisted of trade counter, stock control and pricing staff and group two contained administration and management staff. Training for group one commenced in February 2004 and was completed for the go live date in March 2004. This was to ensure the smooth operation of the Point of Sale Counter on the opening day of the new premises. As counter staff were the first to meet with the customer, it was imperative that they were fully conversant with the system. Training for the administration and management staff then commence from the go live date.

Despite of the initial shock of moving premises and changing the accounting and business management system, employees found the system very easy to adapt to and the learning curve was not as steep as expected.

Doyle's chose the majority of INTACT Modules but were particularly impressed with the Trade Counter, Stock Control and Mobile Warehousing Modules. Operating in a fast paced environment, INTACT's Trade Counter Module, a Point of Sale system designed specifically for hardware stores and builders merchants was ideal for Doyle's operations. The module enables the company to process transactions efficiently through quick bar-coding facilities and instant access to product, pricing and customer account information. To accompany the trade counter Doyle's also requested some bespoke development work in the form of a front end stock menu. This was designed by key personnel to the company's specific requirements.

| Tell a friend