Based in Cradley Heath, West Midlands, A.Perry Ltd is a family owned and run company established in 1925 by Arthur Perry, who started out by making steel gutter brackets and hinges.

After years of growth and acquisitions, 2017 saw A Perry reach new horizons as they moved from their 50,000 square foot premises to a new 90,000 square feet factory, warehouse and office space, spread across more than five acres of land.

With over 80 staff, A Perry is now the largest supplier and manufacturer of Hinges, Ironmongery, Chain and Threaded Bar in the UK, supplying customers in Europe and the rest of the world. The additional space secures A Perry future growth by increasing their storage capacity and distribution facilities.

With extensively high volume import operations maintaining their large stock holding and a continually enhanced product range of 15,000+ items, A Perry are able to provide excellent choice, value and fast delivery to their customers.

The company implemented their OrderWise Business Management Solution back in 2012 with the need to move away from bespoke packages, achieve growth and unlock their true capabilities. To see how OrderWise has helped A Perry with their growth over the last few years, we spoke to the two directors of the company, Guy & Chris Perry, as well as other key department managers within the business to hear of their experience of using a complete End-To-End OrderWise solution.

Watch the A. Perry video case study

Established in 1925, A. Perry Ltd has grown to be the UK’s largest independent manufacturer and supplier of ironmongery and threaded bar.

In this video case study, see how A. Perry has been able to reap the benefits of OrderWise, providing them with one single solution to manage all their daily business processes from end-to-end.

The Requirement

Over several years, A Perry had spent a vast amount of money adding bespoke modules to their previous Sage 200 system, which had resulted in integration issues as each new piece of development did not fully integrate with the last. What’s worse, having commissioned a number of bespoke developments to their Sage 200 system to meet the company’s requirements they still found they could not attain the level of functionality needed to efficiently manage their ever-growing operational activity.

“Our Sage 200 system couldn’t cater for the volume of orders we were getting, it was all very manual”
– Patrick Corcoran, Internal Sales and Customer Manager

“We found that Sage 200 was very static, we couldn’t manipulate the data at all.”
– Will Dougan, Accounts Manager

Eventually it became clear that A Perry needed to look at alternative options.

“If we carried on down the bespoke route we would never get to the end of it.”
– Guy Perry

A Perry had identified key requirements for a new warehouse management, sales, manufacturing and procurement system, with the option to add further solutions for each area of the business as and when it’s required.

“We wanted one system that would be able to go from taking orders all the way through to integrating with our warehouse, manufacturing and reordering systems”.
– Guy Perry

“We looked at many software systems, but we found OrderWise to be the most complete as a package.”
– Chris Perry

The OrderWise Solution

Sales Order Management

For over five years now, OrderWise has provided A. Perry Ltd with a complete end-to-end system that delivers a level of integration and business control beyond any of their initial expectations. By solving the needs of each individual area in the business where a requirement had been identified, OrderWise has significantly improved processes and operations throughout the company.

“Typically, we receive sales orders on a daily basis through numerous different ways – telephone, fax, email, online orders as well which come through our website. In an average month, we take something in the region between 600-800 orders.”
– Patrick Corcoran, Internal Sales and Customer Manager

We asked Patrick to identify OrderWise’s biggest advantage:

“They work with us – we give them ideas, they will develop them, we bounce them against each other, and we all come together with a better solution going forward to suit our needs. That’s the real big advantage of a package like what OrderWise can offer.”

“OrderWise has brought us on leaps and bounds really as a sales force. Simple things like knowing exactly what stock quantities you have got on the shelves, the true margins that you are making and the overall ease of just putting an order onto the system. We have become a lot more proactive as a company and as a sales force too. 5-6 people used to enter orders and quotes all day long, we have now trimmed that down to one person entering orders, allowing the other guys free on the phone to take enquiries.”

Warehouse Management

However, it is not just on the order processing side that A Perry have seen significant improvements but within their daily warehouse operations too.

“We process around 200 orders a day, which is around 1,000 lines and anything between 18-20 tonnes of stock. OrderWise has made us a lot more efficient, we now pick on the handsets and we go around in a specific walk route.”
– Ashley Armstrong, Operations Manager

“Just in tonnage alone, we on a record day on the old system would pick around 3.5 tonne. On the OrderWise system, our record day is 11.5 tonne for one picker. Our error percentage has dramatically reduced too, across over 19,000 lines despatched last month using the OrderWise system we had an error rate of 0.002%.”

Integrated eCommerce Website

More recently, A Perry decided to extend the level of integration within their business processes by getting a brand new eCommerce website professionally designed and developed by the OrderWise team.

“We had a standalone website before, but again it needed changing and it needed to be something that spoke to OrderWise. Obviously when we found out that OrderWise had their own website team we jumped on it.”
– Chris Perry

“It’s all about integration, that’s the most important thing. Now you can take an order on the website and it will go all the way through to actually being picked and invoiced, all in one simple process.”
– Guy Perry

Ongoing Business Support

For a business like A Perry, where the complexity of their daily processes can greatly vary from day-to-day, it is important to receive a level of support that is best suited to meet their demands.

“From the support side, that’s probably one of OrderWise’s greatest strengths, 100%.”
– Guy Perry

“The relationship that we’ve built with OrderWise from day one has been phenomenal and I think that is because of the care and attention that OrderWise gives us. A lot of support before we went live to make sure that we understood how it was all going to work, full training – so going live they were very, very keen to make sure it worked properly.”
– Chris Perry

“The thing that we found OrderWise are great for, are helping us develop as a joint partner; we don’t look at OrderWise as just a supplier. For us, OrderWise are a partnership, who work very, very closely with us. They come up with some fantastic ideas and they help us to continue to grow.”
– Guy Perry

The Future

In terms of the future, A. Perry Ltd aims to continue to grow the business by further streamlining their manufacturing, moving into different markets, expanding their product range and ultimately doubling their turnover over the next 5-7 years. OrderWise looks forward to supporting the company going forward and we would like to thank the A. Perry Ltd team for their kind words and taking the time to talk to us.

Visit the a. perry website

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