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Industry News
Triple recognition for Long Rake Spar
Long Rake Spar is delighted to have been shortlisted for three awards at this year’ s BMF Members’ Day Conference and Awards: the inaugural Data Yard Data Excellence Award, the BMF Supplier Member Engagement Award and the BMF Marketing Excellence Award 2026.
The Data Excellence nomination is a particularly proud moment. Long Rake Spar has been recognised for outstanding engagement and for a clear commitment to going beyond the minimum standard, continually looking for ways to improve the quality, completeness and consistency of our product data. We were also the first supplier to go live on Data Yard.
That recognition matters because product data is no longer simply a technical requirement. It sits behind how products are marketed, specified, sold and understood across the supply chain. Accurate, complete and structured information supports better digital experiences, greater efficiency and stronger confidence for merchants and their customers.
Working with Data Yard has given us the opportunity to contribute to a more consistent and reliable industry-wide approach. We have been impressed by the ambition behind the platform and by the collaborative way the team has supported suppliers through the process. For us, this is not a one-off data exercise. It is about treating product information as a strategic business asset and continuing to improve it over time.
Tammy and Shane BMJ Awards
We are equally thrilled to be shortlisted for the BMF Supplier Member Engagement Award. The BMF plays a vital role in bringing the industry together, creating opportunities to share knowledge, support important initiatives and build stronger relationships across the merchant and supplier community. To be recognised for our contribution and engagement is a real honour for the whole Long Rake Spar team.
These nominations reflect something we care deeply about: being an active, collaborative and forwardlooking industry partner. Whether through better product data, participation in sector initiatives or closer relationships with merchants, we want to play our part in helping the building materials sector move forward.
We are looking forward to joining fellow members at the BMF Members’ Day Conference and Awards at The Belfry in September. Whatever the result, we are proud to be shortlisted alongside so many respected businesses and grateful to both the BMF and Data Yard for the recognition.
Working around your systems, or working with them?
Most builders’ merchants start the same way: hard graft, strong customer relationships, and a toolkit of spreadsheets, a POS system, maybe a standalone accounts package. For a while it works.
Then volumes grow, product ranges expand, and the cracks appear. Stock data sits in three different places. Invoices go out late. Staff spend hours reconciling numbers that should already match. Decisions get made on gut feel because nobody trusts the data enough to act on it with confidence.
It’ s a pattern we see across trade and distribution, and one Mazzanna Tiles, a wholesale tile supplier serving both trade professionals and the public, knew well. Before adopting Klipboard’ s ERP Go, the business was double and triple handling information across disconnected systems.
“ The systems weren’ t built for a tile shop and made our processes more long-winded than they needed to be. We were tailoring ourselves to the systems instead of the systems working for us.”
James, Store Manager, Mazzanna Tiles
That’ s the real cost of outgrown tools. It isn’ t just the wasted hours, it’ s a business built around its software rather than the other way round.
ERP Go was built specifically for businesses that buy, stock and sell: distributors, trade retailers, builders’ merchants and specialist suppliers. It connects
purchasing, stock, sales orders, invoicing and delivery in one cloud-based system, so stock levels update in real time, pricing applies correctly at the point of order, and invoices go out the moment a delivery is confirmed. No spreadsheet lookups, no reconciling three versions of the truth.
For Mazzanna Tiles, that meant a single, connected platform in place of a patchwork of isolated tools, one built to scale as the business grows.
It’ s a familiar story for merchants at that inflection point, where the old way of working still technically functions, but only just. The businesses that move first tend to be the ones that stop firefighting and start planning ahead.
If that sounds like where you are, our practical guide covers the operational challenges facing growing trade businesses, and how connected systems like ERP Go address them directly.
Please visit www. longrakespar. co. uk for more information.
Read the blog: A Practical Guide For Businesses That Buy, Stock and Sell
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