A homeware and ironmongery supplier has implemented new technology to help it grow to become a multi-million pound business.

Carlisle-based More Handles, on the Kingstown Industrial Estate, has a catalogue of over 80,000 products including lighting, handles, ironmongery and homeware.

The company said as e-commerce was becoming an increasingly important part of its business, it worked with OGL Computer, based in the West Midlands, to use a new system to manage customer relationships and online sales.

The software enables More Handles to run the three core aspects of its business – trade counter, retail showroom and e-commerce website - through one system and remove the manual processes of order management and stock handling.

Mike Hunt, commercial manager at More Handles, said: “All orders are automatically imported directly, removing any extra staff involvement and the subsequent costs and potential errors.

“The time-cost saving of this system is crucial to our business model. It enables us to use staff time to manage the reactive and proactive sales calls and provide staffing to our customer service department, rather than as order input agents.

“The integration between our website and OGL Software allows us to manage price changes from our suppliers in a timely and organised manner. We also need to be able to use individual pricing matrices for each customer account and it means our customers can view their own specific pricing when they log in."

The software has also allowed the business to automate processes to make stock, purchasing and order management more efficient.

Previously all orders were part picked by its warehouse team and then manually assessed for any missing stock.

The new software has a feature which alerts them to shortages so they can prioritise picking products in limited supply to complete orders more efficiently.

Mike added: "The efficiency savings this has provided has directly enabled us to grow to a multi-million turnover business while retaining a small warehouse team that manages the sales order processing, purchasing and stock.”

More handles is a family-run business - with more than 23 of the 43 staff related to someone else in the business.

It was set up in 2007, opening its first trade counter and showroom in 2012 and a second branch in 2017.

Last year the company was a finalist in the Best Large Business Category of the in-Cumbria Business Awards.