Family Business Operates as World-Class Distribution Company, Optimising Efficiency Gains from Warehouse Processes
Within a few short months of deploying Epicor Prophet 21, Harrison Silverdale experienced business improvements that seemed too good to be true. These included: a move from manual to barcoded warehouse processes; a reduction in average picking times; improved audit trails for sub-contracted parts; and a newfound visibility into business health.
Managing Director at Harrison Silverdale, Mark Harrison, reflects on how quickly and dramatically operations changed. “Sometimes we pinch ourselves when we think back to how we were working before. We’ve transformed so many parts of our business, continuing to squeeze even more efficiency out of warehouse, sales, and shipping processes.”
Founded in 1982 by Mark’s father, Harrison Silverdale continues to be a family affair with Mark’s son, Max Harrison, serving as Technical Manager. The company’s engineering expertise and knowledge of the fastener industry is a distinct advantage—supplying specialized industrial fasteners for plastics, composites, and sheet metal to major OEMs and distributors across Europe. These include products such as threaded inserts, compression limiters, studs, cage nuts, and brass inserts for plastics.
The company required an ERP system with built-in functionality for fastener distribution, and a full-featured Warehouse Management System (WMS) that could be deployed in the cloud.
An Epicor customer since 2007, Harrison Silverdale was on a legacy Epicor ERP platform that served the company well over the years but had run its course. The business was ready to fully embrace warehouse automation and digitisation and say goodbye to paper-based and manual processes.
“We were missing out on ERP functionality and opportunities to improve how we do business,” Mark shares. “We also wanted to move to the cloud to give employees anywhere, secure access to help enable remote work.”
Harrison Silverdale required robust platform functionality that could help to provide a foundation for continued growth. The company evaluated two platforms: Epicor Prophet 21 and a solution from a local UK vendor, conducting several demos with both solutions. The decision came down to which company helped to provide the most supported, future-proof technology with the flexibility to deploy in the cloud.
*Changing the ERP system is no small feat, and it was a decision we took quite seriously,” Mark explained. “It was evident Epicor Prophet 21 would deliver the performance, industry-specific functionality, and scalability to take us where we wanted to go with warehouse management. Moving to the cloud would allow us to stay up to date with new releases and go live with a subset of functionality and expand from there.”
The Epicor Prophet 21 implementation process took 14 months, including user training and testing. Harrison Silverdale and Epicor are members of the British & Irish Association of Fastener Distributors, bringing together expertise from both sides to incorporate warehouse management best practices. Epicor Professional Services was on-site to assess current warehouse processes and make recommendations based on what’s worked well with other organizations.
Max credits Epicor’s deep understanding of the fastener distribution industry and warehouse management to help the company get the most value from Epicor Prophet 21: “We really benefitted from the warehouse insight from Epicor, helping us assess our warehouse sequences and make changes to bin locations to boost time savings.”
Prior to moving to Epicor Prophet 21, Harrison Silverdale had a very well-organized warehouse, but it was not computer-controlled or widely digitised. “We wanted to take advantage of the Warehouse Management System within Epicor Prophet 21 immediately, and everyone in the company was on board,” Max explains. “We quickly deployed barcode scanners and label printers, and on day one, we were shipping as if we’d been using the platform for years.
Epicor WMS helped Harrison Silverdale reduce the risk of human error during picking processes, eliminating the need to create labels with part numbers via separate printers and manually select boxes from shelves. Labels are now system-generated based on purchase orders, and sales orders automatically generate shipping labels. Mark explains, “Goods have a label on them which is more customer-focused, that tells the customer their part number, which is barcoded to their purchase order number. If they have barcode facilities at their end they can scan those labels. As well as being a lot more efficient, the professionalism of the whole WMS package is just fantastic and helps us achieve a massive goal for the company.”
By leveraging automation with barcode scanners, we’ve massively reduced picking errors and continue to increase the speed and efficiency of our warehouse staff.
In fact, the company uses the labeling functionality within Prophet 21 as a selling point for new business, touting the company’s capability to meet Automotive Industry Association guidelines.
The company is also focused on reducing the number of picks per item. For example, the most popular selling items may only be picked a few times because shipments are going out in large quantities, while smaller quantities maybe be picked several times a day. With this insight, the company is making continuously warehouse improvements, bringing more frequently picked products closer to the packing bench for less travel time.
“By leveraging automation with barcode scanners, we’ve massively reduced picking errors and continue to increase the speed and efficiency of our warehouse staff,” Max elaborates. “Based on data in Prophet 21, we’ve optimised bay locations in picking sequence to save additional time.”
Harrison Silverdale relies on contract companies for plating of certain parts. For these items, the company used to complete a manual stock adjustment when parts were received. Now, adjustments are made throughout the ERP system by adding a specific plating or process code tied to the supplier. As a result, purchase orders are automatically generated with the part number, weight, and quantity, and when the part is returned, the product is logged as is standard with any finished good.
“The secondary processing within Prophet 21 is a huge advantage,” Mark says. “We can now look at order commitments and know instantly if sub-contracted goods have gone out, gaining a much-needed audit trail and traceability.”
The introduction of Epicor Grow and AI-infused analytics has been a game-changer for the company. It benefits from ease of use and the ability to grant fast business visibility to various staff members.
“Epicor Grow has changed the way we work as we now hold more frequent management meetings to assess business health and use the data to make adjustments,” Mark shares. “If we learned anything during the pandemic, it was the importance of being flexible and reacting quickly, and this system allows us to do just that,” Mark shares.
The company evaluates a wide range of analytics to track KPIs, assessing data tied to the following: monthly and year-to-date sales; accounts by sales rep; how many calls sales reps have made; how many new customers are acquired each month; how many total prospects; and current stock turnaround.
“The combination of Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Grow allows us to easily build metrics and do more with our data,” Max adds. “A big data point Mark was eager to have is our warehouse stock valuation, and we now know exactly how much stock would remain when all existing orders are completed. The learnings have been huge.”
Harrison Silverdale also uses the pricing library in Epicor Prophet 21, which helps to enable it to base pricing on the source price. Within the system, the company can adjust pricing, and changes are made across the board, allowing the sales team to type in a part number and instantly receive the right price, rather than searching for the price that was historically quoted.
Having Epicor Prophet 21 in place is a massive leap forward for us and we are looking for more ways to squeeze efficiency from our processes. We are a family-operated business that runs like a world-class distribution company. The impact has been brilliant.
“Within Epicor Prophet 21 we can set prices for select customers or certain products and the system knows—this is today’s price and this is the margin we’re making.”
Mark and Max both emphasized how the company wants to keep the momentum going and tap into more parts of Prophet 21.
”Having Epicor Prophet 21 in place is a massive leap forward for us and we’re looking for more ways to squeeze efficiency out of our processes,” Mark ends. “We are a family-operated business that runs like a world-class distribution company. The impact has been brilliant.”
