In the third edition of our Department Spotlight series of articles, we focus on our Research and Development (R&D) department.

As one of our core functions, R&D enables KCS as a company to provide specialist software, services and fully-integrated trading and business management solutions to our customers in the Distributive Trade, large or small, wherever they are located in the world.

Quick facts

• The team comprises just over 355 staff members located across South Africa, UK and Ireland, the United States, Benelux, the Nordics, and Australia.
• Globally, R&D covers a range of solutions across 3 portfolios, including: Rental, Distributive and Automotive.
• The leadership team consists of 4 Portfolio Directors and 4 Technical Directors who cover the following 2 focus areas:
  • Product Management and Delivery: This structure is responsible for the overall product strategy, the alignment of delivery resources to achieve the product strategy, GTM and other product life cycle activities and overall product success.
  • Architecture and Technology: This structure is responsible for ensuring that our products have a sound go-forward technology strategy, providing architectural design guidance and support to delivery teams, and overseeing the quality of delivery, security and other processes and protocols.
    
    

The guiding principles behind how the department operates

At KCS the mission of our R&D department is to be at the forefront of innovation and technological advancement. We continuously work to explore new frontiers, uncover new opportunities and push the boundaries of knowledge.

Below are the core values that guide our operations:

Highlights from FY23

Below are some of our release highlights from the past financial year. We are extremely proud of these features and recognise every employee who had a part in the successful development, testing, deployment and release-to-market of these features.

K8:

• Email Immediate Invoice and Immediate Credit Note — K8 users in sales order processing now have the ability to email customers' immediate invoice or immediate credit note.
• EFT integration for South Africa — A first for South Africa, which we are proud to share, is K8’s integration with Nomad and Adumo. The integrations provide K8 users with the ability to use EFT (contactless or chip-and-pin, credit, or debit card) payment solutions.
• Nomad loyalty card integration – Rewarding loyal customers is key for our Distributive Trade customers. K8 now boasts with this capability.
• New features available on POS (till interface) – Our POS till interface now offers even more capabilities to make sales processing faster, which include:
  
  
  • “Sale and Return” functionality, payment by Cash Type for Account Customers, and the ability to scan the same product multiple times which adds the quantity to the existing line.
  • The option to create or amend existing customers.
  • New permissions on the till interface (only users with the relevant permissions will be able to do a product search in the till).
  • The ability to produce a copy Cash Invoice when raising Cash Sales and producing Till Receipts. The Cash Invoice can be archived as well as the printed till receipt.
    
    

Layered Solutions:

• Our team has been on a focused drive to improve all existing mobile apps, adding new features, and improving their existing functionality with K8.
• We are also very proud of the launch of ePOD and eStockCheck for K8 Trader/ IQ Retail.
  
  

Recognising the importance of skills development

As a Group, we remain committed to delivering software solutions and service that takes our customers’ businesses forward. One of the key factors that play a role in our ability to deliver on these objectives, is our staff skillset. As a result, our R&D department actively works toward developing each of their team members through:

• Faster, effective onboarding,
• Accredited specialist training through our own in-house training platform and other 3^rd-party providers,
• Targeted learning focussed around our products, and
• Hands-on industry experience for early-career professionals who partake in our Graduate Programme.

What can our customers expect from R&D in the future?

FY24 roadmap and strategy to be released soon… Watch this space!

Curious to find out more about the different departments in the Kerridge Group?
Learn more about our Customer Support team in last month’s article.