City Distribution

For nearly 40 years, City Distribution has been a lifeline for independent bathroom showrooms and plumbing trade counters across the North of England. Established in 1987, the company has grown into the region’s leading supplier and distributor of bathroom products, offering thousands of product lines and next-day delivery. Since its inception, the focus has been on efficiency and reliability and service centered around trust and consistency.

Despite the company’s strong service heritage and commitment to operational excellence, City Distribution felt growing pressure to modernize. Faced with competition from new pop-up distributors selling goods for very low prices, City Distribution was committed to using technology systems to further differentiate in areas of service and product quality.

General Manager, Vicky Begg and Liam Phillips, IT Support for City Distribution share how the company continues to protect and nurture customer relationships, meet growing industry demand, and how Epicor Prophet 21 is integral to the business.

Long-standing History Shines Through

City Distribution was originally deployed on Epicor xVP, but the limitations of the legacy solution had become impossible to ignore. Inventory management was difficult, annual stock takes were time-consuming, and critical business data lived in spreadsheets or in the heads of long-tenured staff. The challenges of the system became particularly evident during COVID times when bathroom and home renovation projects were on the rise and product demand spiked. Sales at City Distribution rose by 30% and long-established manual processes were pushed to the limits.

City Distribution knew it needed a modern ERP platform to support day-to-day operations and long-term growth. After evaluating solutions from Epicor and Kerridge, the company selected Prophet 21, deployed in the cloud. The decision largely came down to relationships, continuity, and cost as Vicky explains: “We had a long-standing history with Epicor and knew the existing support team would support our migration to Epicor Prophet 21. From a financial perspective it just made sense as we’re a small, family-run business and need to make every investment work.”

Addressing Acute Stock Inaccuracies

From the outset, City Distribution approached the deployment with four essential goals to: 1) improve stock accuracy and order fulfillment; 2) deliver a customer portal to make it easier for customers to see products and accounts; 3) digitize sales and delivery processes, and 4) migrate to the cloud to enhance security, reliability, and user access.

The stock accuracy issue was particularly acute. With annual stock takes and no ability to perform rolling cycle counts, the team often faced inventory discrepancies. “We had horrendous stock variations come up at stock takes and annual counts required significant time and a large team to manage by hand,” Liam shares.

“The absence of digital tools made it difficult to track cross-pick notes, identify supplier-related issues, and prevent inventory from being misplaced. Prophet 21’s integrated warehouse management capabilities introduced immediate improvements, helping us know where to focus time and attention.”

The company can easily track inventory adjustments, identify which suppliers’ products are most susceptible to picking issues, and plan stock takes based on data—instead of gut instinct. Plus, City Distribution shifted from doing one massive annual stock take to monthly cycle counts driven by real-time insights.

Their cloud deployment solved another long-standing problem. The old on-premise server was unstable, causing reliability issues. By moving to a cloud environment with Prophet 21, City Distribution helped improve the platform’s performance and enabled remote work—giving the company stability and the ability to work from home when needed.

Customer Portal for Improved Customer Experience

One of the most anticipated elements of City Distribution’s move to Prophet 21 is the launch of a new customer portal. Many of the company’s customers are owner-operator showrooms who are busy serving customers throughout the day, often leaving administrative tasks, such as placing orders, to the evening. Historically, the only option to place orders was via phone or email, potentially leading to missed sales or slower service.

Having a visual presence with the customer portal keeps showroom and trade counter customers intimately engaged with our business, helping us continue to market our products to help them succeed.

The new portal will give customers 24x7 access to account status, invoices, credit limits, and detailed product information, including images, 3D specifications, and fitting instructions. Customers can also check stock levels and place orders for next-day delivery.

The portal will help City Distribution continue to differentiate in a crowded and fast-changing marketplace. “Having a visual presence with the portal keeps showroom and trade counter customers intimately engaged with our business, helping us continue to market our products,” explains Vicky.

The portal will also drive benefit to the business, reducing call times and allowing City Distribution’s internal team to redirect those resources to aftersales support and proactive product marketing.

Productivity Gains in the Field

City Distribution is also taking advantage of Prophet 21 mobile sales functionality, a great addition for the company’s sales reps in the field. “Our reps love being able to easily check stock from their phones, eliminating the need to pull out a laptop in front of the customer and wait for connectivity—which could be a clunky and time-consuming step,” Liam shares.

In addition to gaining insight into inventory status, sales reps add customer visit summaries and notes through voice-to-text and create tasks tied directly to customer accounts. The ability to easily capture activities in the field results in a more responsive sales experience, ensuring accounts are kept up-to-date and outside reps have fast access to key aspects of ongoing opportunities.

Better Insights, Stronger Business Decisions

Designed by distributors for distributors, Prophet 21 helps provide extensive reporting functionality, allowing City Distribution to use insights to take action. With the platform’s mobile sales tools, the company’s reps work smarter and faster, able to check product stock while in the field, capture customer visit summaries with voice recordings, and create tasks tied directly to customer accounts. From there, the company can dig into the data, knowing where reps are spending their time to help leadership evaluate employee performance.

“If we can put our products on display at a customers’ showrooms, the ROI is much greater, leading to increased sales,” explains Liam. “With Prophet 21, we have reports on display orders, we are able to track orders secured by rep and by product to assess sales and determine placement success.”

The finance teams also benefit from enhanced visibility. Cash-collection reports help staff manage accounts receivable, while better tracking returns to suppliers prevents lost credits and gives the team a snapshot of outstanding return merchandise authorisations (RMAs). As a result, the company has more accurate way of recording returns, having immediate insight into what’s open, outstanding values, and when to chase suppliers.

Modern ERP for Modern Distribution

With Prophet 21, City Distribution has an ERP foundation to support long-term growth in a highly competitive market. “We know there are competitors trying to edge their way into customers’ showrooms and so we are using technology to stand apart—bringing efficiency and accuracy across all areas of the business,” Vicky continues.

It’s the small efficiency gains driven by Epicor Prophet 21 that really add up to make a major impact. We wouldn’t be able to run our business without it.

By improving inventory and warehouse management control, increasing customer engagement with an online portal, and capturing data-driven insights to drive decision-making, City Distribution can maintain high stock levels of high-quality products to meet demand.

“It’s the small efficiency gains driven by Epicor Prophet 21 that really add up to make a major impact. We couldn’t run our business without it,” summarises Vicky.