Travis Perkins
With a 200-year history in the construction industry and as the largest distributor of building materials in the UK, the Travis Perkins Group operates over 20 businesses across the UK, including well-known retailers such as Wickes, Tile Giant and Tool Station and owns 19 product brands within these businesses. Headquartered in Northampton, the company has more than 29,000 employees across more than 2,000 branches, stores and sites around the UK.
Opportunity
Travis Perkin’s core business operations rely on a legacy ERP system built on Rocket UniVerse (RU), a platform known for its robustness but also for its ageing architecture. Travis Perkins operates various environments under this ERP umbrella and the system powers everything from in-store transactions to inventory control, but increasingly introduced cost, performance, and operational risk, including:
Aging legacy platform with rising operational and integration risks.
Declining availability of Rocket UniVerse skills, with many internal experts nearing retirement.
High volume of customer service tickets driven by fragile workflows and limited automation.
Minimal documentation and informal development practices, creating knowledge silos.
Slow innovation cycles, limiting the business’s ability to modernize and integrate with new systems.
Ongoing license and maintenance costs tied to unused legacy code.
To continue scaling and modernising, Travis Perkins needed a partner who could stabilise the legacy platform, improve engineering efficiency, and progressively modernise without disrupting the business.
Solution
Mitra AI partnered with Travis Perkins on a three-stage modernization journey, combining deep RU expertise with modern engineering practices, automation, and governance.
Phase 1:Stabilising the Legacy Platform
Mitra AI deployed multiple engineering pods to understand the ERP’s complexity and:
Mapped and prioritised all enterprise integrations.
Built innovative stub-based testing modules.
Ensured plug-and-play readiness for ERP integrations.
Stabilised system performance used across the new frontend and finance applications
This created a secure, predictable foundation for the transformation.
Phase 2: Enhancing and Managing the Engineering Environment
Following Phase 1 success, Travis Perkins expanded the partnership to modernise customer support operations.
Mitra AI:
Took over all Level 2 and Level 3 ticket support
Onboarded and trained a dedicated RU team
Introduced REST APIs, test automation, and disciplined service management
Improved reliability and performance of the customer ticketing platform
Within six months, Mitra AI became the primary team for maintenance and enhancements for their entire RU platform.
Phase 3:Progressive Modernization & Knowledge Absorption
To fully reduce dependency on legacy systems,
Mitra AI:
Created a robust knowledge repository and absorbed 100% of system knowledge
Eliminated 30 years of redundant “widow code”
Increased platform stability and reduced ticket volumes
Automated testing for every Rocket fix
Integrated real-time ticket ingestion from stores
Began re-coding legacy Solaris scripts for a modern AWS environment
The process of accruing knowledge within this “ticket intelligence” became the foundation for designing the novolingo.ai platform. Mitra AI can now harness knowledge, meaning, and purpose from legacy Rocket UniVerse code and translate it into enhancement and innovation for any Mitra AI client.
Impact
The partnership delivered significant business value across operations, cost, and capability:
Testimonial
"I have been truly impressed with the Mitra AI team and I am thrilled we chose them as our partner for this important integration project"
Chris Stone,
Head of IT Travis Perkins