TLA, Inc. is a manufacturer’s representative and distributor located in Richmond, VA. Founded in 1944, TLA provides top-quality hydronic heating and cooling equipment from America’s leading manufacturers to the commercial and residential markets. Over the years, TLA has earned respect among its hundreds of loyal customers by maintaining a highly skilled staff of experts who are committed to providing the utmost in professional service to every project.

TLA’s business success is closely associated with Robert Anderson, Sr.’s inspiring story. Robert began his career making motors in Bell & Gossett’s (‘B&G’) factory shortly after being discharged from the Merchant Marines at the end of World War II. In 1949, Robert contracted polio and spent several months recovering from the disease. Although Robert was still dealing with partial paralysis, he returned to B&G and was offered an opportunity to move from the factory to an office position where he soon began to climb the corporate ladder.

B&G and their network of independent representatives was an innovative manufacturing and sales company that led the charge during the post war boom in the commercial and residential hydronic heating and cooling industry. Robert was in the middle of much of B&G’s product development at this time and eventually worked his way up to become the Product Line Manager of Centrifugal Pumps.

Over the following years, Robert played an integral role in developing B&G’s sales and distribution channel while living and raising a family in the Chicago area. In 1974, Robert left B&G to become a principal at their Virginia rep firm, TLA, taking a financial risk that eventually allowed him to gain a majority share in the business. Robert’s adult sons, Robert (‘Bob’) Anderson, Jr. and David (‘Dave’) Anderson, Sr. supported their father’s ambition and made the decision to relocate with their respective families to Richmond, where they have lent their substantial engineering, sales and management skills to help build and sustain TLA’s legacy of business success ever since.

TLA has established itself as the state of Virginia’s largest supplier of custom-built centrifugal pumps manufactured by B&G. TLA represents many other leading brands of commercial HVAC and engineered plumbing equipment including Hoffman Specialty, McDonnell & Miller, Domestic Pump, Cemline Corporation, Laars Heating Systems, and more. TLA also maintains an extensive inventory of their vendors’ products, including genuine replacement parts for virtually everything the company sells, to support the customers in their territory. Following Robert’s retirement in 1992, Bob presides over TLA and manages the day-to-day activities while his brother, Dave manages the company’s sales activities. TLA’s dedicated staff includes Senior Sales Representative and stockholder, Bill Jewell and several long time sales and support people, some of whom have over 35 years of service to the company. In addition, third generation family members David Anderson, Jr. (Dave’s son) and Trey Anderson (Bob’s son) have recently joined the company and are making important contributions to the business.

TLA Gains Advantage with Technology

Bob has long recognized the important role that information technology plays in managing a successful business. In 1981, TLA positioned itself as an early adopter by computerizing its accounting and inventory on the MAI Basic 4 platform with a packaged software that was extensively customized. By the early 1990s, however, Bob recognized that advances in technology might open new paths for TLA; in particular, Bob was interested in finding a packaged software that might allow the company to do more with the same or fewer resources while reducing the costs associated with maintaining its system.

Infor Distribution FACTS was presented to Bob as a solution to this challenge. “FACTS showed us how we can do what we’re doing better,” said Bob. “FACTS was user friendly, with alpha searches and function keys providing a big improvement when compared with the homegrown solution.” Bob went on to explain that the greater ease of navigation offered by FACTS combined with its rich inventory and customer service functionality promised to deliver increased efficiencies to TLA.

Bob made the decision in 1990 to purchase FACTS and install it on a new MAI server running the UNIX operating system. FACTS was later upgraded in the mid 1990s to add new feature/functionality and then again in the late 1990s to version 6.7 in order to address the year 2000 date bug problem. During this time, TLA continuously learned how to leverage the FACTS system to streamline its business processes and grow the business without increasing overhead. To cite one example, TLA reduced the number of clerical staff from five to two, allowing the company to shift more resources into revenue-generating roles such as inside sales and customer service. “We have been able to do much more with the same resource level as before,” explained Bob. “Since implementing FACTS, we have increased our business more than five fold while avoiding the expense of hiring additional personnel.”

E&A Support Bob’s Vision

In 2004, a rapidly changing business environment posed significant challenges to TLA. Consolidation in the manufacturing and distribution industries had the effect of disrupting sales channels and exposing TLA to new competition. In this light, Bob thought that it would make sound business sense to closely evaluate TLA’s information technology strategy and determine if FACTS would continue to be the solution that might best support the company’s long range goals.

To that end, E&A’s Doug Crosby visited with Bob in the fall of 2004 to discuss his needs in depth. Bob’s wish list included a desire to gain easier enterprise-wide access to information for management reporting; enriched customer relationship options to better support TLA’s growing sales staff; a shipping system interface to connect the enterprise system seamlessly with UPS; and more. Bob was particularly interested in reviewing all of the upgrade options available to him within the Infor family of Distribution Essentials products such as Infor ERP SX.enterprise and Infor ERP TakeStock. In fact, E&A provided detailed information and demonstrated both of these solutions to Bob as he carefully considered his options over the next several months.

However, in a follow up conversation with the E&A consulting staff, Doug noted that while TLA had been successfully integrating PCs into its operations for some time, TLA had not upgraded FACTS since the year 2000 release and consequently was unable to take advantage of FACTS’ new graphical user interface. Furthermore, add-on modules that were only available with an updated version of FACTS could help address several of Bob’s major requirements. The E&A consultants agreed with Doug that FACTS could offer TLA with all of the enhanced end user options it was seeking at an affordable cost and with minimal interruption to TLA’s normal business processing.

E&A’s Mike Manning enlisted the help of Dave Johndrow to demonstrate how an upgrade to the 7.5 release of FACTS might address TLA’s critical business issues. The E&A team met with Bob and his staff onsite to discuss Bob’s vision for TLA and explain how FACTS could empower this vision. Dave’s presentation focused on the powerful sales and customer service features in 7.5, including screen personalization, vastly expanded searches, drill-down functionality, quote win/loss tracking information and more. The Windows interface provided options for exporting data to Excel, providing TLA with the reporting flexibility it sought.

Importantly, E&A’s Pro ShipLink module solved one of Bob’s most pressing issues. TLA averages over fifty orders per day for replacement parts to technicians who almost always need to get their building’s heating and cooling systems back on line as quickly as possible. Pro ShipLink’s integration between FACTS and UPS WorldShip promised to reduce TLA’s exposure to costly shipping errors by eliminating the manual re-keying of information at the shipping and receiving station. Furthermore, Pro ShipLink would support TLA’s customer service goals by providing timely tracking information to its customers, empowering them to be self-sufficient in their shipment status inquiries.

Bob’s evaluation continued until December, 2005 when he made the decision to purchase the 7.5 upgrade through E&A. Commenting on the competitive products that were evaluated at this time, Bob affirmed the importance of selecting the right tool for the job. “We recognized that there are competing software systems available on the market, but it became apparent to us that maintaining these systems would require a full-time effort. What would happen if our people couldn’t use the software?,” he asked. “Ultimately, we were looking for a system that would help us improve service to our customers. By showing us a range of options within the Infor product line, E&A helped us determine that FACTS 7.5 represented the best solution for us. The bottom line is that FACTS is a user-friendly solution that our employees can use to efficiently deliver great service, which is key to our success.”

TLA Implements FACTS 7.5

E&A’s Wendy Oakes and Adam Team were assigned to lead the software implementation and hardware upgrade, respectively. Both Wendy and Adam worked on the project onsite during the first several months of 2006. Wendy handled the data conversion from 6.7 to 7.5 including testing, go live assistance and hands-on training. Adam installed a new IBM RS/6000 server and configured the system to support TLA’s end users both in the Richmond office and via a remote connection to its branch sales office in Virginia Beach, VA. With all of the software and hardware components functioning properly and end users ready to begin processing, the new system was brought online in May, 2006 and has run successfully ever since.

Importantly, TLA has taken advantage of E&A University to help its employees gain mastery of the expanded capabilities inherent with FACTS 7.5. E&A University provides end users with the power and convenience of an interactive, online learning experience delivered by instructors who possess many years of FACTS product expertise. TLA participated in a series of live and recorded E&A University classes to help their employees gain familiarity with the software and improve their productivity. “E&A University has been a good platform for us because we can train at our own pace,” explained Bob. “The instructors know the product inside and out, showing us how to use the software as a tool to solve our unique business needs. For example, our customer service representatives learned how to locate parts in the warehouse with the fewest keystrokes possible and how to format their screen displays to better suit their individual roles within the company,” said Bob.

Similarly, the add-on modules included in the project have helped TLA to maximize its software investment by more effectively addressing its specific business challenges. The addition of the Archive module to FACTS has proven to be a valuable medium for storing documents electronically, thereby making important information available to FACTS end users. “People talk all the time about the elusive paperless office, but here is something very practical you can do,” said Bob, who went on to explain how Archive allows TLA to quickly and easily locate documents without the time and hassle of shuffling through paper file cabinets. “For instance, if you need to see a past invoice, you can search in the Archive module and view the GL posting right on the screen. Using Archive’s security settings, we can provide access to the document types that our employees need most while protecting more sensitive materials. Overall, Archive has been a really nice product for us,” he enthused.

TLA benefits from other value-added services delivered by E&A. Bob has become a regular attendee at E&A’s annual User Group series which brings together representatives from E&A and Infor to discuss the latest news, services, product updates and related information that is pertinent to the FACTS end user community. Bob also enjoys the peace of mind offered by E&A’s dedicated FACTS support team located in Greensboro, NC. “We have a great relationship with the people who are providing remote support,” said Bob. “We can call E&A’s Help Desk to get support from people who understand both the distribution business and the software application. It’s worked very well for our company.”

Keeping Pace Into the Future

Looking forward, Bob plans to continue working with E&A to discover new opportunities for TLA to keep pace with technology and achieve its business goals. For example, Bob is currently discussing how E&A’s Managed Services team can help TLA protect its vital data and systems. Bob is currently integrating the MaxRecall document management system with FACTS to store more documents electronically and thereby shrink demand for office storage space.

Over the years, TLA’s dedication to sound business practices including the savvy use of information technology has helped the company to establish itself as an industry leader. However, there is another important set of values that positions this family-run business apart from the others. Bob commented, “Occasionally, I’ll get a call for a repair part for a B&G pump that dates back to the late 1940s and I wonder if my dad made the motor that’s on that pump. I think about him and the others who built this company by selling quality products backed with expert advice and service to our customers, and I think about my responsibility to continue this tradition so that our next generation has an opportunity to do an even better job than I have.”

To learn more about TLA, go to www.tla-va.com.