Khaos Control plus Phocas bring data-driven decision making to wholesalers & retailers
Two longstanding software providers dedicated to the wholesale and retail market in the United Kingdom, Phocas Business Intelligence Software and Khaos Control have joined forces to bring business intelligence (BI) to all versions of Khaos Control ERP.
Phocas business intelligence offers an out-of-the-box solution for Khaos Control customers, so it comes with built-in dashboards, metrics and content. Phocas is built for the everyday user, which means people across all job functions from purchasing to sales, can access powerful data insights.
Khaos Control is multi-channel ERP software solution customised to an individual company’s requirements.
Matt Harwood, Head of Sales and Partnerships at Phocas says it's the perfect time for wholesale distributors looking to streamline decision-making to consider adding BI.
“The pandemic has been a catalyst for change across businesses, and the pace of that change is accelerating at 5 times the rate of previous years. What is evident is that companies are becoming more digitally driven to serve the ‘new’ customer and master demand forecasting. A business intelligence platform provides full data visibility of operations to better understand performance and emerging trends,” said Matt.
Phocas and Khaos Control want to use the partnership to help distributors harness their ERP data to quickly visualise data insights to improve and grow. Data insights provided by Phocas enables people to address many interdependent issues simultaneously like rising transportation costs, tighter margins and stock delays.
“Businesspeople need to make a lot of decisions daily, and they need evidence of patterns of behaviour and facts to help guide them through,”
Matt Harwood, Head of Sales and Partnerships, Phocas
Founder and Managing Director of Khaos Control, Mike Cockfield, believes distributors can digitally transform without a huge investment of resources, so Phocas’ low barrier to entry helped confirm the partnership.
“We chose Phocas as a partner because we wanted to collaborate with a business that could help us offer an integrated BI solution with Khaos Control, as well as managing the BI side of things. We looked at PowerBI and other BI solutions, but ultimately, partnering with Phocas provided us with a seamless and integrated solution, which was a significant plus,” said Mike.
“Customers have been choosing us for our expertise, innovation, and genuine passion for helping businesses drive growth. When they join Khaos Control, people are not just picking a piece of software, they’re joining a family of successful and welcoming distributor and retailers” explained Mike.
Phocas and Khaos Control share three customers already in the UK, Robert Welch, a cutlery designer, Dorwest Herbs Ltd, a veterinary herbal supplement supplier and Micro Scooters Ltd, the global scooter brand.
“Robert Welch combines Khaos Control ERP with Phocas for our sales reporting tool for the management, sales and finance teams. Phocas provides users with multi-dimensional view of company sales data with flexible time periods and measures. We also use the BI tool to view sales vs budgets and daily order transactions. Phocas is easy to use for end users and requires minimal administration once implemented.”
Louise Bugg, IT Projects & Pricing Manager, Robert Welch
Phocas’ core business intelligence offering, combined with Financial Statements and Budgeting & Forecasting is included in the partnership

Empowering businesses with intuitive data analytics, driving informed decisions for growth and profitability. We make people feel good about data.
Related blog posts
Inventory days formula is equivalent to the average number of days each item or SKU (stock keeping unit) is in the warehouse.
Read more
A CFO of a wholesaler recently described dead stock as piles of cash in the corner of a warehouse that she can’t access. And, in many ways, she’s not wrong. Dead stock is unsold products in storage or returned from retailers. It reduces the cash flow you need to buy revenue-generating stock and takes up valuable warehouse space that profitable products could use. Dead stock inventory also increases carrying costs, tying up resources in excess inventory that no longer matches customer demand.
Read more
Recent findings from the Phocas Wholesale Distribution Inventory Survey reveal an interesting trend in that demand planning is a key performance differentiator. The results show that 11% of distributors rate their demand planning as very accurate with the rest of the respondents reporting somewhat accurate to poorly accurate demand planning. The accuracy gap also highlights how having the right data and systems to carry out demand planning is a huge time saver and delivers benefits such as reducing inventory costs, improving service levels and securing better terms with suppliers.
Read more
Wholesale distributors are under constant pressure to balance inventory investment and maintain healthy profitability. Rising costs and tighter margins across many product categories mean distributors must pay closer attention to how their inventory value contributes to profit.
Read moreBrowse by category
Find out how our platform gives you the visibility you need to get more done.
Get your demo today