Kerridge Commercial Systems acquires IQ Retail

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KCS, which is headquartered in the UK, provides software to 1,700 customers worldwide, offering end to end ERP solutions including supply chain management, order to cash, financial management, CRM, warehouse management, transport management, business intelligence, ePOS and more specifically for the wholesaler, distributor, retailer and merchant sectors.

The acquisition supports the company’s strategy of continued growth and follows three other acquisitions during the last 18 months including two in USA and another previously in South Africa.

Like Kerridge Commercial Systems, IQ Retail has been delivering retail and ERP solutions for more than 30 years. The company’s suite of products, a popular retail POS solution in South Africa, is distributed via a channel of 160 business partners. On completion of the acquisition, the KCS operation will provide solutions to 13,000 customers and 100,000 users in Southern Africa.

IQ Retail will continue to maintain its existing solutions and, in time, will introduce new benefits to its customers from the KCS portfolio such as advanced e-commerce and cloud services along with an optional upgrade path to the established suite of KCS services and products. To further support existing customers of its K8 ERP system, KCS will look at integrating some of the solutions from the IQ Retail suite.

Ian Bendelow, KCS Group CEO, said, “As the second key strategic acquisition in Africa, this further strengthens our presence on the African continent, expands our service capabilities and product offerings. As we further our platform for growth, IQ Retail affirms and aligns with our ongoing business strategy of focusing on the needs of retailers, merchants, wholesalers and distributors. Our customers will benefit from an even stronger South African based team to support our customer’s needs."

Michael Reyneke, director of IQ Retail, added, “This acquisition by KCS allows two industry leaders to combine their resources to further strengthen service and product offerings, enabling the delivery of high performance, integrated business management solutions to our customers in Southern Africa. We believe our history, culture and client profile will propel us into the future and we look forward to enhanced offerings for our clientele.”