Author: Mark Law, Director, HAYLEY DEXIS | Services & Solutions
HAYLEY DEXIS is hitting the 50-year milestone, and though I’m not old enough to have been here from the start, I have seen 21 years of the right kind of change. I have been proud to play my part in the company’s progress.
We have resisted the pull of Amazon-style box shifting. Instead, we have held fast to our customer-first values, even while going through rapid growth. Now, as part of the Descours & Cabaud group, our focus remains on stock, service, and people
From National Accounts to I.T.
I originally joined Hayley in 2004, as part of the National Accounts Team, having spent 20 years at another business, in the same industry within several roles. My initial role at Hayley was around providing and analysing data and pricing information for our major customers, however, it became apparent that we didn’t have the systems in-place to do this effectively, which made this task difficult and time consuming. Don’t get me wrong; the green screen computer system worked well, and every team member was familiar with it. However, it didn’t provide customers and internal team members with the information and efficiencies that a growing business needed.
That was the start of my career in I.T., and as part of a small team, I helped specify and implement new ERP and BI systems for the company. The new systems delivered a new level of technology at the time that could support our internal team members in helping customers. Today, as Director of our Services & Solutions division, I’m pleased that the business is continuing to seek new technological advances. However, nowadays, this is now left to our teams of dedicated I.T. professionals, but I’m confident that it will take us on another leap forward to better support customers.
Customer-first Mentality
What stands out, though, is that I.T. is a hygiene factor – it’s necessary – but stock, service, and people, I know I say that a lot, are the core. What HAYLEY DEXIS offers today is partnership. If you take the Services & Solutions division of the business, for instance, you’ll see vending machines that provide several unique solutions, powered by our own software. Behind this, though, is a much broader offering, as we partner with customers to analyse data for stock efficiency and maintain significant local stock levels at branches, giving our customers peace of mind for their critical components and consumable items. Since 2014, I have personally seen the levels that our team goes to when supporting customers – that hasn’t changed today. There’s a deep investment in understanding how our customers’ businesses operate and their individual challenges on a granular level when it comes to stocking vital parts of machinery and tools. There aren’t many businesses around that do that today, but it’s a point of differentiation that keeps us at the forefront of customers’ minds.
Global Challenges Served by Local Stock
For the manufacturing industry and those relying on machines, providing local support with stock and people who know how to prevent breakdowns or fix issues quickly has never been more important. The challenges 20 years ago are not those of today. Today, companies face eroding profit against a backdrop of changing tariffs on materials, transport, increasing costs, and a shrinking pool of skilled people – it has never been more difficult. It’s knowing these difficulties, knowing that companies cannot face breakdowns, that drives us to support our customers.
Our team now fills skill gaps in operations for customers, where there was once an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and specialists – there is often a general engineer. So, when something happens that is outside of the engineer’s expertise, we can support and, in many cases, train them. Holding local stock also means avoiding the sensitivity of global pricing and logistics of ordering.
Future
I don’t have a crystal ball, but if I did, I’d say that companies like HAYLEY DEXIS will be the backbone of supporting industry in the UK for decades to come. We must all stick together, and stock, service, and people are central to this. Service and people are the two that mean everything – we must never forget how important it is to support our customers in the way we have from day one.
Interested? You can find your local HAYLEY DEXIS branch here