Built/ founder on constructing a disruptive start-up on NetSuite foundations
- Summary:
- Two years after he appeared on stage at SuiteWorld, Nick Thomas describes how NetSuite’s platform underpins an entirely new customer experience for small and midsize UK building firms.
When he appeared on stage at the cloud ERP software company’s SuiteWorld conference back in April 2017, the newly established Built/, part of the Travis Perkins Group, had yet to begin even implementing the platform. Almost two years on, Thomas has plenty to say about his experiences with NetSuite to date.
Much of it isn’t entirely positive. In the early days of implementation, he says, Built/ really struggled to access the expertise needed (even from within NetSuite itself) to get the software up and running in a way that fitted the needs of a company looking to disrupt established ways of doing business when it comes to selling building supplies to small and medium-sized building firms.
Meanwhile, poor performance of the cloud-based software and slow loading times continue to be an issue. And the website management aspects of NetSuite, in particular, really frustrate him, because of what he sees as a lack of function. In fact, he says, NetSuite’s software doesn’t really excel in any of the individual modules that it offers, when compared to best-of-breed competitors - but with all that said, for the strength of integration between the modules and for the overall configurability of the system, he gives NetSuite a rock-solid 100% score.
We could have picked a better customer relationship management system. We could have certainly picked a better website platform. We could have picked a system with more choice in terms of warehouse management. We could have possibly chosen even better enterprise resource planning and financial reporting. But what I absolutely didn’t want to do, what I hugely wanted to avoid, was trying to bolt a bunch of systems together and then getting them to behave in ways that could pave the way for our new business.
And I don’t regret making the decision at all, because the degree of integration outweighs the problems. And in terms of configurability, I’d say NetSuite has exceeded my expectation in some ways. The power of how integrated it is and this degree of configurability is huge for us, because almost any process or any redesign that we want to implement is possible, and we’re a fledgeling business with a lot of new ideas and a lot of opportunities to make things better for customers.
Market disruptor
To understand the opportunity here, it’s important to understand what buying materials typically means for a small building firm. It generally involves a trip to a builders merchant, where the builder must drive around the yard, locating supplies and loading them onto their vehicle. Once that’s done, they’re issued with a ticket detailing their purchases, they present it at the front desk and then are forced to haggle on prices. Only 60% of the products they need will be in stock in any case; the rest they have to order, says Thomas - and it’s not uncommon for those representing smaller firms to get ripped off on price or for their orders or deliveries to get bumped by the builders merchant, in order to accommodate larger, more profitable customers.
Built/, by contrast, is on a mission to give them an entirely different customer experience. One important element of this is its Click & Collect service: the builder orders online and, at the appointed time, steers their vehicle into a designated bay at Built/, where their pre-prepared order is ready for loading by Built/ staff. It’s basically a ‘drive-thru’ experience and NetSuite’s software has provided a platform for the company to deliver it, says Thomas:
What NetSuite provides us with are databases for customers, products and transactions, all integrated, giving us a single version of the truth to drive our customer experience and business processes in a unified way. This allows us to manage our stock in the particular way that our business model requires, and gives our employees access to orders, the transaction history, customer data, booking slots and so on. With all that information in one location and live, we can ‘flight manage’ a customer to the right location, have their order ready and load their vehicle.
Another aspect of Built/’s customer experience is scheduled delivery time slots for online orders. When placing their order online, building firms are offered a choice of timeslots based on what the back-end platform tells Built/ it can commit to in terms of availability, order size, customer location and so on. And for customers who simply show up in person to buy, their orders are handled by staff on the ground, using mobile, handheld point-of-sale (POS) systems that give them access to the necessary aspects of the NetSuite platform to complete the sale.
Firm foundations
The upshot, says Thomas, is that around half of Built/ customers are in and out of its combined trade and distribution centre in Aston, Birmingham in around 10 minutes. In 2018, this single branch had more than double the turnover of the local Travis Perkins branch, without cannibalising its sales, he says, and even with just one branch, Built/ ended last year as the largest cash-based trade business in the whole Travis Perkins network (a heavily credit-based business). Thomas has recently been given the backing to open a second branch in nearby Tyseley in April, with plans for a third branch, also in the Birmingham area, already in the works.
This cluster-based property strategy is quite deliberate, says Thomas, as a way to explore how local branches might support each other and act as a prototype of what might eventually be achieved by Built/ on a nationwide level. In other words, Built/ may be a local business for now, but it’s a testing ground for what 100 combined trade/distribution centres operating this way might look like. And the work will continue with NetSuite at its heart, he adds:
The platform is really becoming increasingly successful for us. And, actually, one of the biggest reasons I would never move off it is the upgrade path, with NetSuite committing to regular steps forward. It makes me feel comfortable and confident that we’ll get there in the end. So yes, some parts have been difficult, but I would make the same decision again, every single time.