Choosing software for a sanitaryware business

Two questions decide whether software will work for a sanitaryware business, and neither comes up in a normal demonstration. Can it represent a product family — a pan, cistern, seat and fittings sold as one decision but stocked as four items with rules about valid combinations? And does it treat spares as a real business rather than an afterthought?

Get those two wrong and everything else you liked about the system stops mattering within a year.

Why is the product family the first test?

Because what a customer buys is not what you stock.

A customer decides on a WC. That decision resolves into a pan, a cistern, a seat cover and a fitting kit — four line items, held separately, ordered separately, and not freely interchangeable. Certain cisterns fit certain pans. Some seats fit several models and not others. Wall-hung and floor-mounted change the whole set.

Most inventory systems model this as either one item, which makes stock meaningless, or four unrelated items, which makes quoting a manual exercise in remembering what fits.

The test to run in a demonstration: ask them to quote a complete WC set, then change the cistern to one that does not fit. A system that models families will stop you. One that does not will produce a confident quotation for something that cannot be installed — and that quotation eventually reaches a site.

Why do spares matter more here than elsewhere?

Because the relationship continues for years after the sale, in a way it does not for most building materials.

Nobody comes back for a replacement tile in year seven. They absolutely come back for a flush mechanism, a seat hinge or a seal — often for a model you stopped making, sometimes for one a competitor made and they think is yours.

Handled well, this is a profitable, defensible business with high margins and no competition. Handled badly, it is a person in service maintaining a spreadsheet of which current parts fit which discontinued products, which works until that person leaves.

What the system needs: spares linked to the products they fit including discontinued ones, a way for a dealer or customer to identify which part they need from a model number or a photograph, and stock visibility on parts that move slowly but must be available.

What else is specific to this segment?

Requirement	Why it is different here
Display set tracking	A dealer displaying your premium range has committed real money and sells differently. Knowing who displays what directs your support budget
Warranty across three parties	The installer buys, the homeowner claims, the dealer handles it
Installation compatibility	Rough-in dimensions, wall or floor mounting, plumbing type — quoting without these produces returns
Finish variants	The same product in several finishes at different prices, with different lead times
Architect and specifier tracking	Projects are specified long before they are bought

The first row is worth dwelling on. Display investment is one of the largest discretionary costs in this segment and one of the least tracked. Businesses routinely cannot say which dealers display which ranges, which means they cannot tell whether display spend converts.

What should you ask a vendor?

• “Quote me a complete set, then break the compatibility.” The single most revealing test.
• “Show me spares for a discontinued model.” If the answer involves a spreadsheet, they have not solved it.
• “How does a dealer find which seat fits this pan?” If it needs a phone call to your office, nothing has been automated.
• “Where is display stock recorded?” Most systems have no concept of it.
• “Show me a warranty claim raised by a homeowner.” Not by a dealer — the person who actually claims.
• “Demonstrate with our catalogue.” Not their sample data, which will be conveniently simple.

Should you buy something built for building materials?

If one exists that genuinely models families and spares, yes. Verify rather than assume — plenty of products use the vocabulary of an industry in their marketing without modelling its structure, and you will only find out during implementation.

The more common outcome is layered: your existing accounting system keeps doing finance, and a purpose-built layer handles catalogue, families, compatibility, spares and the dealer-facing side. That is a smaller and less risky project than replacing a working ERP, and we have written about the reasoning in build, buy or neither.

What you should not do is force families into a flat item list and manage compatibility by memory. It works while the person who knows is there.

Common questions

Can we start with just the spares problem?

Yes, and it is often a good first project. It is self-contained, the benefit is measurable in reduced service calls, and it forces you to document product-to-part relationships that will be needed for everything else later.

How do we handle products from before our data was organised?

Work backwards from what is actually asked for. You do not need every discontinued model on day one — you need the ones generating service calls, which is usually a much shorter list than the full history.

Is this relevant if we are a dealer rather than a manufacturer?

More so in some ways. You carry several brands, each with its own family structure, and compatibility questions arrive at your counter rather than a call centre. See distributors and dealers.

What about bathroom design or visualisation tools?

Useful for selling, but they depend on the catalogue underneath being correct. Build the product data first — a visualiser working from an inconsistent catalogue will show customers combinations you cannot supply.

More on this: why generic ERP breaks and what to digitise first. For how we work with this segment, see sanitaryware.