Blue Rock

Tile West (Trading as Tile Ambitions) was set up in 2001 by Marian Barnard & Chris Warmington and originally operated as a distributor of tiles and ceramics to Builders and Developers across Cornwall and Devon.

It rapidly became apparent their range of unique stone-wear offered an opportunity to sell direct to the public also and in the space of 7 years they have opened an additional 3 sites – stretching the length and breadth of Cornwall and Devon .

Like many multi branch operations the management team at Tile West started to feel the strain in maintaining a tight control in the day to day running of the branches. In addition expansion has led to increases in administration and stock levels.

Typically this wouldn’t be an issue but at a time when cost prices are increasing (mainly due to currency fluctuations) and turnover being affected by a slowdown in the building marketplace then the obvious business target is to gain a tighter reign of your operating costs.

A major step in achieving this was to install a fully integrated business software system that linked all the sites and provided the Directors of the business will real time trading information across all four branches.

In the spring of 2008 Tile West engaged with the team at Blue Rock to assess their Intact Software System for Tile Stockists and Distributors. In a very short space of time it became apparent that the software and the company was a great fit for Tile West’s operation but a decision to purchase the system was delayed until the Autumn due other business demands…but even then the solution wasn’t straight forward.

The problem is that Tile West’s head office is in a very quiet area in the heartland of Cornwall and currently Internet providers do not provide affordable, reliable and fast Internet connectivity for rural areas. This meant that Head Office would not be able to offer a reliable software service for the branches.

Fortunately Blue Rock also supply Intact under a Hosting model which means that Tile West’s software and server can be housed at our offices and all of the Tile West branches link to us via our secure, dedicated line to the Internet with a 99.9% uptime from British Telecom.

The benefits?  Well obviously it enables us to provide a solution but also improves speed of access and reliability. In addition Tile West do not have to concern themselves with the day to day management of their server nor their daily backups and Blue Rock have instant access to their server should it require updating or maintenance.

Commenting on the order, Simon Barber, Regional Sales Manager added “We feel that this hosting model is becoming a far more attractive option for companies, such as Tile West with smaller multi branch locations. We appreciate that not all potential customers will have limited communications options but the benefits of hosting in terms of a managed service with the cost spread over 5 years will appeal to a boarder audience.”