ArtiCAD across the Hammond’s enterprise


	Based in Leicestershire, the family run business of Hammonds is the UK’s top manufacturer of fitted furniture for bedrooms and home offices.
ArtiCAD across the Hammond’s enterprise
Now managed by the third generation of Hammonds, the company employs about 1,000 staff across its Consumer, Retail and New Homes divisions, in its manufacturing operation and own transport fleet. Hammonds designs and installs an average of four hundred bedrooms each week for consumers and a further three hundred are delivered for the New homes and retail enterprise. Towards the end of 2008, Hammonds extended its use of ArtiCAD-Pro from its surveyors out to its designers. And is soon to see the integration of ArtiCAD-Pro with the company’s ERP system to provide an enterprise-wide solution. According to Andy Bowen, Business Analyst, Hammonds: “This integration will provide us with massive opportunities to achieve greater efficiencies and to improve even further our standard of customer service.”
Surveying with ArtiCAD-Pro In contrast with some long-standing organisations, Hammonds has been keen to embrace new technology to help maintain, and improve, its commitment to delivering excellent customer service. In fact, Hammonds recognised the role that CAD could play in the sales process more than a decade ago. Having carried out extensive trials and used a number of different systems, ArtiCAD-Pro was selected in 2002 as the solution of choice for the company’s surveyors. By the end of 2006, Hammonds’ fifty surveyors across the UK were producing an average of 400 bedroom and home office designs every week, using the ArtiCAD-Pro software. But in 2008 Hammonds decided that having proven its value, the time had come for some major new developments in the role of ArtiCAD-Pro.
	Rolling out to designers Hammonds decided to see whether the software could improve the level of service it could to offer to its customers by rolling it out to the company’s designers. By the end of the 2008, fifty Hammonds designers had been trained how to use ArtiCAD-Pro, and they are now using it to create designs for home offices and bedrooms in customers’ homes. For the first time, ArtiCAD-Pro is also being used by the designers to produce pricings of their designs, rather than doing this manually. Andy Bowen: “ArtiCAD-Pro allows us to engage with the customers, manipulate the design – and if necessary, redo everything quickly and easily. Importantly, we are able to show the furniture against the customer’s own, or chosen, colour schemes and backdrops – which complements our marketing platform ‘get the look’.”

The designers have adopted ArtiCAD-Pro with enthusiasm. “It is brilliant, fantastic, and speeds up appointment times. Multi room jobs can be done in one visit and it is a big improvement on service to our customers”, said one, whilst another simply said: “It’s fabulous, the business, and customers love it.” Andy Bowen: “I think the fact that designers – by their very nature – are creative and open-minded has meant that they can immediately see the benefits that ArtiCAD-Pro can give them. It enables them to really demonstrate their design flair – and respond to customers’ wishes without delay. ArtiCAD-Pro is already helping to reduce the time that a designer needs to spend in the customer’s house – which for many busy consumers is a further advantage.
Customisation commissions Hammonds has commissioned ArtiCAD to carry out a number of different customisation projects to ensure that the software meets their specific needs. One such project as been the ‘Automatic Infill Wizard’. For those customers who wish to have a complete wall of wardrobes, it can be challenging for the designer to calculate the necessary ‘side infills’ which will achieve this type of look. ArtiCAD has created the ‘Automatic Infill Wizard’ for Hammonds which automatically fills in the gaps and orders the relevant parts.
	A further example of ArtiCAD’s customisation work has been the automatic specification of angled doors for wardrobes in attics or those affected by staircases. ArtiCAD-Pro not only specifies the doors in line with the angle, but also ensures that the doors have the correct profiling which thus provides a seamless, professional design. Andy Bowen: “We have developed a fantastic relationship with the team at ArtiCAD. We received the Automatic Infill Wizard within two weeks of mentioning that we needed something to help us with this challenge. We have worked with a number of different CAD suppliers, and ArtiCAD is undoubtedly the clear front runner.