Your view on Plumbers' Merchants

[Benchmark213]

We are a supplier of trade counter software to plumbers' merchants and would be interested to hear from any members about what makes your life easier when you go into a plumbers' merchant or what drives you nuts! What should they be doing or not doing that as a plumber would make a real difference to how you work? Thanks! Simon

 

[R.Oak]

Good levels of stock and a system that allows quick transactions. nothing worse that losing half an hour out of a busy day just for a few fittings

 

[Benchmark213]

Baboons???? Following R.Oak's comments, is barcoding generally seen as a good thing i.e. something that speeds up the sales process? What about electronically signing for accounts? Would it be useful to have a screen showing what is currently on your order (minus prices of course)? Any other technology-related things that would make life easier for you?

 

[Plumbstar Tom]

any intergration with iphone or similar i love, i have an app for almost everything

 

[oz-plumber]

Not sure how you guys operate, but I have just done orders for jobs next week online.

We can login to some suppliers and order the necessary materials for jobs and either have them delivered to an address or available for pick up at any branch.

Of course this has some glitches, due to items that are not generally held in stock, but if that happens I will get a phonecall letting me know if the item(s) will not be available at the requested date / time.

At least now I don't have to waste time at the suppliers placing orders tomorrow for things that need doing next week.

 

[Anton]

Just this.

View attachment 19562

All respect to Dick Turpin, at least he had the decency to wear a mask.

 

[Benchmark213]

We can do this easily as an order import from a customer's Web site. We normally do it as a 'back office' function behind a customer's own e-commerce system. For example with National Shower Spares. It would be easy to create a generic Web page as a part of our software for each merchant but it then may conflict with their own ecommerce pages. We can pass this information on to merchants. It tends to be more down to the individual business.