Sage supports rapid design to delivery service at The Premiere Kitchen Company

For many years, Premiere Kitchens had conducted its business using Sage 50, with supporting Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. However, as Accountant Gary Holt explains, “We recognised that we’d come to a natural end in outgrowing the system’s capabilities.

Clearly, for strong sustainable growth, it was vital to move to a more powerful and comprehensive solution, with additional functionality for configure to-order manufacturing. We have a policy of sustained across-the-board investment to support our growth and undertook a process of in-depth reviews to analyse the market and ascertain what solution would best meet our needs.” A key priority was finding an established vendor with a proven, secure system. Finally, the firm required a Business Partner with experience of the furniture industry and an understanding of its public sector solutions.

Premiere Kitchens began the process of selecting a system which would provide a secure foundation for future expansion. Having experienced high quality service from their Sage 50 software, management at Premiere Kitchens regarded moving up through the Sage range to a more powerful system as a strong possibility. Furthermore, Sage Business Partner Pinnacle could offer a configure-to-order module, which gives companies in the make-to-order, assemble-to-order or kit-to-order sector greater flexibility to extend their product range.

After careful consideration, Premiere Kitchens purchased a Sage Line 500 system for 23 users, running on Microsoft Windows 2000 and with a SQL Server 2000 database, implemented on Compaq hardware, along with Pinnacle Configurator. “Implementation went ahead successfully, even though it was interrupted by our move to larger premises,” recalls Gary. “We went live with hardly a hitch; an achievement largely down to the quality of the support we received from our Pinnacle consultant.

Since the implementation of Sage Line 500, Premiere Kitchens has grown considerably and has also achieved landmark quality accreditations such as ISO 14001 for environment management and Investors in People.

The Sage solution has supported all these developments, as Gary Holt comments, “With Sage Line 500 in place, we have been able to process a greater volume of orders without increasing our head count. Looking back on how we used to operate, it was very cumbersome. In contrast, today we have an efficient system in which data flows from one part to another, from the initial estimate onwards, to support our sales, manufacturing and delivery processes.”