STL implements management system at Dhamecha Group

As part of the agreement, STL is providing a full range of installation and customisation services, along with a comprehensive support service.

Dhamecha owns five huge cash & carrys inside the M25, and services in excess of 10,000 customers - independent grocery retailers, off licences, chemists, bars, clubs and restaurants – making it the largest member of the Today’s Buying Group. It achieved its enviable market position by adhering to the simple philosophy that the ‘Customer is King’ and, therefore, deserves competitive pricing, excellent product availability and an absolute commitment to first-class customer-service.

However its aging legacy IT system was not neatly integrated. This was creating islands of spread-sheet based information that was only available to head office via overnight transfer, and even then was cumbersome to analyse. This undermined executives’ view of operations and therefore their confidence in making quick strategic decisions.

More significantly for Dhamecha’s customer service strategy, the lack of central control also meant that information about product sales, demand, availability and orders was not easily shared. This diluted the company’s ability to control stock which it feared could potentially lead to stock-outs and dissatisfied customers.

To combat these issues, Dhamecha decided to move its entire IT estate onto the STL MMS platform, encompassing tilling and management solutions for both head office and its five branches.

The first stage of the project involved the rollout of STL’s new, easy-to-use tills to the branches. These have not only improved check-out efficiency, but, with centralised management, also support special promotions such as Trade & Save, helping to increase customer loyalty.

STL has also completed the installation of STL MMS at head office, which has enabled Dhamecha to centralise the buying function for better stock control and purchasing scales.

Now, STL is underway with the final stage - rolling out MMS to Dhamecha’s five branches - and has already completed the first, at the company’s Watford warehouse.

The STL solution is due to go fully live by the end of the year. When this happens, everyone organisation-wide at Dhamecha will be operating with the same information. STL’s powerful reporting tools will enable drill-down queries on real-time data, which will result in better-informed decisions.

Reaction times will also be sharper, enabling the company to keep key lines up to optimum volume in all branches at all times. Further, the STL solution will enable Dhamecha staff – via PCs around the warehouses - to interrogate all branches simultaneously for real-time stock availability, enabling swift fulfilment of demand spikes and more proactive customer service.

All this adds up to more effective delivery of Dhamecha’s customer-focused promise to provide competitive pricing, excellent product availability and first-class customer-service. Pradip Dhamecha, the company’s CEO, said, ‘By shrewdly using STL’s IT solution to deliver our customer-centric strategy, we will exceed our customer’s expectations - resulting in loyalty, trust and credibility, which we believe will secure our long-term commercial success.’