Founded in 1979, Southeastern Emergency Equipment (SEE) is the number one source for the tools, training and ongoing support that gives first responders the power to save lives.

In the beginning, SEE’s primary customers consisted of rescue squads and ambulance services in the southeastern United States. Today, SEE has evolved into an international distributor whose employees share a passion for supporting the emergency medical services (EMS) community to the best of their ability.

“We’ve consistently maintained a focus on serving the unique needs of the EMS industry,” said Nikki Mullen, SEE’s vice president. “We sell a full line of pre-hospital equipment and supplies including everything from basic EMS supplies such as band-aids, splints and stretchers to critical care equipment, trailers, WMD/MCI products, pharmaceuticals and emergency vehicles.”

SEE’s customer care team focuses on premium service before and after the sale. Most SEE sales representatives have EMS or fire backgrounds and live close to the customers they serve in dozens of U.S. states where they provide a direct source for expert product demonstrations, training and just plain good advice. A knowledgeable team of customer service representatives (CSRs) located in the main office in Youngsville, NC are dedicated to serving specific groups of customers, building long-term relationships while capably assisting with orders and other requests for service as needed.

SEE setup a training division in 2009 to help paramedics and other health care professionals maintain their certifications. “We have the capacity to teach up to 80 students classroom-style at our training center in Youngsville,” said Nikki. “We can also send instructors onsite at the customer’s request. There are only a few companies in the U.S. who have the credentials to offer these courses, so we are very proud of what we are able to do.”

SEE is led by Carla Baker who began her career in sales and was later promoted to national sales manager before becoming SEE's president in Aug 2003. A Nationally Registered Paramedic, Carla has hands on experience with the SEE product line and instills pride of purpose in the company's mission.

Exceeding customer expectations for over 30 years with quality products, training, support and leadership, SEE is the source for the tools and the knowledge that EMS professionals need to give every patient the critical care they deserve.

SEE Partners with E&A

In 2000, SEE realized that its legacy SBT software was insufficient to the task of effectively managing a growing, distribution-centric enterprise. Nikki was tasked with leading the search for a new system that would support SEE’s long-term objectives as a company. Her search led to E&A’s office in nearby Greensboro, NC and Infor ERP FACTS, a highly configurable solution designed specifically for distributors with industry-specific buying, stocking, selling and servicing capabilities.

“When we were making a decision on what software to go with, it was evident that FACTS offered us the most options,” recalled Nikki. “However, service was very important to us. The key factor in selecting E&A’s solution was the level of customer service E&A provided to its customers, which we felt was in line with the kind of service we strive to offer to our own customers, too.” Satisfied that E&A had the right software and the expertise to ensure both a successful implementation and the professional aftermarket support services it wanted, SEE awarded the project to E&A.

Nikki gave the E&A team high marks as SEE personnel were prepped to use the new system. “Sometimes change is difficult for people but we made the transition to FACTS very smoothly,” commented Nikki. “We went to E&A’s office in Greensboro for classroom training and it went exceptionally well. We learned how to use FACTS to get far more useful information to effectively manage our business than we had ever been able to get from SBT.”

The transition to an integrated system proved beneficial. Nikki compared and contrasted how FACTS improved SEE’s business processes by providing enterprise-wide access to information. “We were excited because there were things we could begin to do using the software instead of paper,” said Nikki. “For example, accounts payable became easier with FACTS because we didn’t have to hand-write checks anymore. Similarly, to run a P/L statement using SBT on the amount of business we were doing at that time was a huge undertaking; a typical month end closeout might take us from five to seven days to complete. After implementing FACTS, our closings are now completed in a matter of hours,” she explained.

Nikki continued. “The ability to keep up with collections on past due accounts is important to us,” she said. “We could run aging reports with SBT but these reports didn’t help us follow up very effectively. With FACTS, the collections process is much improved. The information we need to make good decisions is readily available to us, which in turn has allowed us to reduce our AR days. This is a real, bottom-line benefit to our company,” Nikki declared.

The availability of real-time inventory data has provided SEE with an advantage. “With SBT, we could get an inventory report but open orders wouldn’t be visible in the report,” said Nikki. “One of the great things with FACTS is that you can get a report and look in the system to view your inventory counts to include what is allocated for customer orders, which makes calculating the current inventory balance a lot less hassle.” Greater visibility in FACTS meant that SEE workers didn’t need to constantly call the warehouse manager to locate inventory, thereby improving customer service while freeing labor for more valuable activities.

Since the go-live, E&A software consultants have worked with SEE to ensure that FACTS continues to meet the client’s specific business needs. One of the most important modifications E&A developed for SEE was written by Jim Morton who customized FACTS to make better use of lot number control in the inventory management system, a crucial requirement in an industry that is accountable to the FDA in the event of a product recall. This feature would prove especially valuable as SEE later extended its use of FACTS into other functional areas of the enterprise.

Over the past ten years, SEE has steadily progressed with its use of FACTS and has markedly grown as a company. E&A has regularly upgraded SEE’s system to the latest FACTS release every two to three years, allowing SEE to take advantage of new feature/functionality in an orderly, timely manner. From the initial installation of nine computer users in 2000, the number of end users who directly or indirectly interface with FACTS has grown to 44 in 2010 as virtually every employee in the company has learned to work more efficiently and effectively using technology.

As SEE has advanced in its use of technology, E&A’s value-added services have proven useful. For example, FACTS University has provided a platform to help SEE train new employees and to get existing employees up-to-speed on the latest software release. “FACTS University has been a great tool and will definitely be something we continue to use,” said Nikki. “FACTS does so many things, there’s no way for one person to retain all that knowledge. When we have brought new people on, we have sent them through the classes so they can gain in-depth experience with the system. We have attended the replenishment classes live and viewed the recorded sessions two or three times in order to thoroughly absorb the lessons.”

Nikki has used content from FACTS University as a springboard to develop personalized training programs for SEE employees. “We have blended some of the FACTS University content with our own notes to develop a series of internal training sessions for our staff that we like to call ‘FACTS Friday’s’,” she said. “The classes feature our data along with processes and procedures that are unique to our company.” Nikki believes a logical next step might be to store the FACTS Friday sessions in a custom library at FACTS University where they would be accessible to SEE employees on-demand, whenever they might be needed.

With one-to-one guidance from E&A’s local implementation consultant Wendy Oakes and the benefit of a superbly trained staff, SEE has successfully migrated its FACTS system forward with minimal disruption to its daily business processes. “All of our upgrades went very smoothly,” said Nikki. “We had quite a few modifications over the years -- some with sales orders, pick tickets, booking commissions reports, and so on -- but I don’t ever remember a time when we upgraded and had a problem with our modifications or any other significant issue.”

SEE’s Laser-Sharp Focus on Warehouse Management

In 2008, SEE had all the pieces in place to retool its warehouse operations, including a well-trained staff, access to advanced technologies and a business partner in E&A who recognized an opportunity for SEE to capitalize on its investments.

Witnessing SEE’s challenge of processing an ever-increasing volume of orders and accompanying materials throughput, E&A’s Bill Briggs suggested that SEE take a close look at Pro Warehouse, a solution designed by E&A software engineers to improve warehouse processes pertaining to shipping, receiving, warehouse transfers and physical inventories. SEE recognized the opportunity to interface bar code equipment with FACTS to help its warehouse staff work more efficiently and soon agreed to partner with E&A on the project.

From late 2008 through early 2009, E&A worked on implementing the warehouse solution. E&A coordinated with SEE’s third party network services provider to configure a standard WiFi network and install access points in SEE’s warehouse. E&A’s Doug Crosby helped specify the handheld devices to be used by SEE’s workers to scan the bar code labels. Bill installed the Pro Warehouse application, provided onsite training to SEE end users and follow-up support after the initial go-live to make sure everything was functioning properly.

Bill explained how the system works. “We configured the handheld devices to login to the Pro Warehouse application installed on the FACTS server,” said Bill. “Pro Warehouse accesses data within FACTS for validation and verification purposes, writing to data files that FACTS uses when confirming orders.” Bill said that future warehouse expansion can be easily accommodated by synchronizing additional access points to the already existing system at minimal cost to SEE.

With E&A’s solution in place, the results have been very positive. Now, SEE uses the handhelds to scan shipments as they are received in order to accurately capture items, quantities, and related information. This includes the all-important lot and serial numbers which are prevalent in the pharmaceuticals and medical supplies industry. “The bar code system is one of the best things we’ve ever done, if nothing else than to help with product recalls that are tied to specific lot and serial numbers,” stated Nikki. “With over 12,000 part numbers in our system, we have greater confidence in our ability to track inventory due to the higher level of accuracy that Pro Warehouse provides.”

Job satisfaction and worker productivity in the warehouse has improved, with the technology making it easier for SEE to rapidly get new employees online. “It’s amazing how well our warehouse workers have taken to the scanners. I almost think they’d take them home to sleep with!” remarked Gene Vaughn, SEE’s warehouse manager. “We had a new employee join us recently; we trained her in only a few hours but she’s already doing very well picking orders for us.” Gene went on to discuss the benefits of warehouse automation for both SEE and its customers. “It’s helped tremendously with pulling the right product every time,” said Gene. “For example, we stock 30 to 40 different kind of gloves but I can’t remember the last time we shipped out the wrong glove to a customer. Whereas before we might have had ten instances of misshipped items per week, now we have virtually zero. We simply don’t make mistakes like we used to before,” he emphasized.

Today, SEE ships over 56,000 packages a year with an astounding 99.9% accuracy rate. Yet, Gene hopes to improve even more. “We might have a dozen orders per year that gets sent to the wrong place, but I’m hoping the scanning system will completely eliminate that problem, too,” said Gene, who explained that SEE will soon use the scanner guns to eliminate the task of manually keying in order numbers. Gene stressed what’s at stake for SEE and its customers. “EMS people can’t wait. We might have to ship next-day air a case of defibrillation pads or IV catheters to Texas and lives could be at risk if the customer doesn’t get what they need in a timely manner,” he said.

On that point, Nikki detailed the dramatic improvements to its warehouse processes that SEE has achieved since pairing Pro Warehouse with FACTS. “Before, we had a 24 to 48 hours shipping turnaround time. Now, we’re down to less than 24 hours with most orders going out the same day. When you’re pushing 100 to 150 orders every day, that’s a lot of paperwork and UPS packages – and we’re talking from two to 100 line item orders!” exclaimed Nikki. “It’s been a major accomplishment for us to successfully streamline our processes. I believe the changes are putting us above the competition.”

Finally, the level of traceability made possible with Pro Warehouse ensures that SEE is protected in case of a customer challenge. Information gathered by Pro Warehouse allows SEE’s customer service representatives (CSRs) to gain full visibility into FACTS and assure customers about the precise lots and expiry dates associated with the products they may have purchased. This information empowers SEE’s CSRs to improve customer relationships while ensuring that all returns are handled as fairly and equitably as possible.

SEE Continuously Improves with E&A and FACTS

By the latter half of the decade, SEE’s success had presented its talented management team with a multitude of challenges. To position the company for continued prosperity, a new building was opened; the already existing office and warehouse space was remodeled; an in-house pharmaceuticals department was started complete with a climate- and access-controlled room; a bid department was ramped up; a training facility was built; many new employees were hired and trained; among numerous other projects. All of this activity left precious little time available for SEE managers to focus on developing the company’s software applications.

In 2009, SEE contracted with Bill DeMars, an independent consultant who was charged with exploring how FACTS could be further developed to support SEE’s needs. Bill soon began to work collaboratively with the E&A staff in Greensboro, championing a number of initiatives that have borne fruit for SEE.

One of the first areas identified for improvement was rebates which at the time was painstakingly handled using a manual process. “We were getting information to process rebates out of multiple spreadsheets,” recalled Nikki. “Then we’d make whatever changes the manufacturer wanted, make sure our numbers matched their numbers, and hope that we didn’t miss anything.” To rectify the situation, Bill DeMars met with E&A’s Dave Johndrow to specify how SEE’s rebates processes could be automated. Dave submitted a spec which was subsequently approved and passed to Jim for writing into code. The modification E&A delivered all but eliminated the possibility of error by extracting the relevant information from the FACTS database including customers, dates, products, quantities and manufacturers. FACTS now tells SEE precisely when and what information needs to be submitted to each manufacturer every month including how much money is expected in return.

Nikki estimates the rebates modification will save SEE hundreds of thousands in both labor costs and hard dollars. “It used to take our purchasing manager no less than ten working days each month to process rebates. Now it takes her no more than five hours total, meaning she can do more of the things we need her to do,” said Nikki. “We figured out that we had been leaving about $20 thousand on the table every month in rebates. Needless to say, the rebates mod has paid for itself!”

Learning how to take greater advantage of the FACTS purchasing system’s feature/functionality was another priority for SEE. As SEE’s business volume grew it became apparent that activating the buying targets feature could provide significant benefits to the company. “We process approximately 400 purchase orders every week,” said Nikki. “Sometimes, we might have cut a PO to the same vendor every day, or even twice in the same day. We knew we needed to improve this! We worked with E&A to setup buying targets in FACTS for the manufacturers who offer to pay full or partial freight, discounts, free goods or other benefits when their buying targets are reached. Our purchasers can now look in FACTS to know, ‘We have to get to this dollar level before we send a purchase order.’ So the buying targets have definitely been a benefit,” she concluded.

Implementing a system to help SEE’s new “bid department” compete for new business was another project given a high priority. A majority of their largest customers such as state/local municipalities typically open up their EMS supply lists to bid, and those municipalities can award contracts to individual or multiple distributors. Since gross-profit margins are often low for this business, SEE needs to prepare these bid as efficiently as possible. E&A developed a “bid management solution” around the requirements prepared by SEE’s and their Business Development consultant Ashmak Inc., which has yielded very positive results. “The bid modification by E&A has more than paid for itself,” said Rhoda Holbrook, Customer Service Manager at SEE. “Before the modification, the preparation of a quote for bid was a manual process: you’d have to write down the information, prepare spreadsheets and handwritten notes to communicate the information to the salespeople; in many cases the notes would have to be faxed to manufacturers or salespeople for follow-up, then you’d have to enter the data into FACTS as a quote, and so on. Now all you have to do is enter the product details into FACTS; modify the pricing and rebate details; and when SEE is the successful winner of a bid you simply convert the quote to an order.” In the event that SEE is not the successful bidder, that information is captured in FACTS so that future bids can be prepared based on historical competitive information which is unheard of in the medical industry. This process has evolved from a multiple week process to that of only a few days. SEE’s overall gross profit increased by 3 percentage points in one month through the requesting and receipt of manufacturer rebates that were previously not collected. Thanks to these efficiencies, the bid department has already participated in hundreds of bids, resulting in an increase in business with the expectation of becoming a profitable operation within six months of its launch in late 2009.

Improving access to information and teamwork between SEE’s sales and customer service departments was another management objective. The problem was that SEE’s sales representatives had become overly reliant on their own CSRs to provide them with timely information; their frequent calls to the customer service desk was draining resources that were needed to directly support the customer base. To correct this situation, SEE decided to supply its field sales representatives with laptops and secure, remote access to the FACTS server so that they could work more independently while delivering better service to their customers.

Since the implementation of the solution, SEE’s salespeople have been empowered with the information they need to sell more effectively while drastically reducing the call volume at the customer service desk. E&A’s Adam Team has worked with SEE on the project. “Adam has helped implement the terminal server for our salespeople to access FACTS,” said Nikki. “For us, the decision was a no-brainer. We benefit because now our sales reps are not interrupting our CSRs anymore, whereas before they would get called every 30 minutes or so. The laptops have enabled our salespeople to do more professional face-to-face selling at the customer site. They can look in FACTS to view past orders, substitute items, and access other information that helps them do what they do best. Meanwhile, our CSRs can spend more time interacting with customers on the phone where they too can concentrate more on providing solutions, and not merely taking orders. It’s been a win-win for us!” she enthused.

Nikki also credits E&A’s Wendy Oakes for her persistence and ingenuity in helping SEE recently implement the Electronic Price Updates (EPU) feature in FACTS. “Wendy analyzed our data and imported a test file of new items into FACTS through the EPU,” explained Nikki. “Wendy kept at it until she got the bugs worked out and was certain it would work correctly for us. If Wendy hadn’t kept at it, we might have dropped the ball; we probably would have said, ‘Forget it and go back to the old way.’” Nikki further commented on the value that E&A’s consultants have provided to SEE. “We get the impression the people at E&A are outside-of-the-box thinkers, which has been useful for solving our everyday business challenges,” said Nikki.

Looking Ahead

SEE continues to seek out new opportunities to lower costs and improve efficiency. With encouragement and assistance from Bill DeMars and E&A’s Jim Morton, Nikki anticipates that activating the suggested reordering system in FACTS will help SEE significantly pare down its inventory investment and free up capital for other uses. “We currently maintain $1.5 million inventory. We’d like to reduce that number by as much as half a million dollars over the next six months based on better ordering practices,” said Nikki. To that end, Jim recently worked with Nikki to review SEE’s reorder levels, making adjustments to help improve buying decisions and uploading the changes to FACTS. “We understand the process will take time, but we believe we can use FACTS to order smarter and not overstock. That’s one of the things we’re implementing now,” she continued.

SEE also plans to implement Infor ERP Storefront, an e-commerce solution that provides a world-class shopping experience on B2B and B2C web sites. To prepare for the project, E&A’s Jim Morton and Danny Crews recently upgraded SEE to FACTS version 7.6 so that it would be compatible with the latest version of Storefront; meanwhile, E&A’s Sam Neogi is working on the Storefront application to deliver the feature/functionality that SEE expects. “We are confident the Storefront will be a hit,” said Nikki. “We have so many customers out there who are begging us to let them be the test dummies! We anticipate the web site will enable us to accumulate more business from individuals and county organizations that have made it mandatory to purchase from distributors who can provide online access. With Storefront, our customers will be able to access up-to-the-minute information on open orders complete with shipments, tracking numbers, and so on. We will also do business more effectively with fire departments and other EMS professionals who work all hours and often get called to duty in the middle of placing their orders; Storefront will be able to hold onto these orders until our customers return,” she elaborated.

Nikki also sees a strategic role for the Web inasmuch as it will allow SEE’s salespeople to spend more time on higher-value sales while the web site processes routine orders for commodity items. “We look at the web site as a tool for the salespeople to stay focused on what they do best: selling capital equipment, not consumables like band-aids and splints,” said Nikki. “Our salespeople need more time to schedule meetings with EMS administrators where they can demonstrate products that can make a real difference for our customers. So we see the Storefront as another piece of a larger puzzle that assists both our salespeople and our customers.”

Underscoring the importance of running a better business with technology, Nikki told us about a dramatic event that unfolded when a particularly damaging hurricane struck the eastern seaboard in the past decade. “The National Guard landed Blackhawk helicopters in a ball field about ten miles away from our office because the emergency services team that needed the supplies could not get across the waterway,” said Nikki. “One of the most pressing needs was OB kits because the extreme pressure change was forcing pregnant women into labor under the most adverse conditions, as you can only imagine. Using FACTS, we responded and were able to quickly load up two helicopters with all the supplies they needed. I will never forget the expressions of gratitude on the faces of the nurses because we were able to assist them in their hour of need. It was one of those moments I will never forget. It makes me proud to be part of the SEE team.”

E&A is honored to play a small part in helping SEE fulfill its important mission. To learn more about SEE, visit its web site at www.seequip.com.

Founded in 1927 by Edwin H. Walker, a former printing supervisor at the Government Printing Office in Washington, DC, Walker Supply Company has always focused on meeting the needs of graphic arts professionals with quality products backed by a high level of service. With a deep commitment to its customers’ success, Walker Supply has become firmly established as a leading source of graphic arts products. Offering everything from paper and media for wide format printing to paper finishing equipment, Walker Supply stocks products from quality suppliers offered at competitive prices.

Walker Supply’s physical location in Rockville, Maryland gives them close proximity to customers throughout the Washington, DC and Baltimore metropolitan areas.  At a time when many national dealers have gone to a more centralized distribution model, Walker Supply has a fleet of delivery vans available to provide next or in some cases same-day services required in the printing industry. Its clients include printing companies, sign companies, government agencies and corporations.

Walker Supply invests in training salespeople and customer service representatives who are skilled at establishing one-to-one relationships, explaining how new technologies can help their customers enter new markets, increase productivity and build profits. Walker Supply sells and supports leading brands such as Agfa, Epson, Konica Minolta, GMI and Drytac.  Walker Supply also promotes their own #1 Network branded products.

Brothers Kyle and Kent Walker are currently guiding Walker Supply through its fourth generation of success as a family-owned enterprise, each bringing their unique background and skills to the business.  As successive waves of new technologies have rocked the industry and forced many independent distributors to sell out or fold, Walker Supply has tried to look to the future and help their customers use technology to their advantage.

“The introduction of digital printing cut off a big chunk of the consumables business that once sustained us,” said Kyle.  “Although traditional graphic arts products are still being sold, the market is rapidly shrinking. But where we see digital replacing one area of our business, we seek our own digital offerings as well as wide format and finishing solutions.” 

In order to pursue the opportunity, the brothers decided to spin off WalkerWide Color Solutions as a separate entity. The launch of WalkerWide.com in May, 2009 has extended Walker Supply’s presence in the digital world, setting the company up for further growth and success among yet another generation of printing customers.

Technology Provides Competitive Advantage

Even as Walker Supply’s management team has learned to adjust to external changes over the years, the use of information technology has been vital to managing within.

In the early 1990s, Kent had been studying the inventory management principles of Gordon Graham to gain insight into how Walker Supply might be able to apply lean distribution principles to its business. Kent’s research led him to Infor ERP FACTS, a fully configurable software system with industry-specific buying, stocking, selling and servicing capabilities that fully conformed to Graham’s methodology.  Beginning with an initial installation of eight computer users in 1993, FACTS has been used ever since to automate Walker Supply’s key business functions and optimize the company’s performance.

Shortly after a requisite upgrade to address the Y2K date issue in 2000, Walker Supply made several critical enhancements to FACTS that have proven extremely beneficial. These included the installation of the FACTS EDI module and an Internet e-commerce module.  As Walker Supply has progressed with its use of technology, Earnest & Associates (E&A) has provided a range of value-added services including custom modifications, implementation services, help desk support, consulting and more.

In 2002, Kent invited E&A’s Mike Manning for a visit to discuss how an upgrade from FACTS version 6.7 to 7.5 might benefit Walker Supply.  Recognizing that the implementation of additional FACTS components could help Walker Supply achieve greater efficiencies, Kent asked Mike to draft an upgrade proposal including the Document Delivery, Email and UnForm add-on modules. Kent approved the proposal.  Soon thereafter, E&A’s Stan Mrazeck and Josh Fake worked to successfully implement FACTS for up to twelve computer users.

A major benefit of the updated system has been to help Walker Supply edge closer to the elusive goal of a highly efficient, near-paperless office.  “We envisioned how we could use UnForm to save documents as PDFs and then email to our customers using the Document Delivery and Email modules,” said Kent. “As a result of this implementation, today we’re saving up to 35% in materials and postage while the labor associated with folding, stuffing and mailing has been reduced from hours to minutes, allowing our staff to dedicate more time to revenue-generating services.”  Walker Supply has made it a standard operating procedure to solicit email addresses from its customers in order to grow its Document Delivery email list and further reduce costs.

A few years later in 2006, Kent and Kyle participated in an E&A user group where the latest version of FACTS was demonstrated; once again, Walker Supply became interested in moving its FACTS system forward to take advantage of new feature/functionality.  E&A’s Doug Crosby worked with Walker Supply to specify the system upgrade which included a new computer server, FACTS version 7.6, the VSI-Fax add-on module and related services.  Doug presented the proposal and earned Walker Supply’s approval.  Stan tasked Jim Thomas with responsibility for the project including data conversion, testing and go-live support. Also participating was E&A’s Sean Marks who lent a hand with the software installation, hardware and network support services.

Tammy Wolf served as Walker Supply’s point person during both the 7.5 and 7.6 implementations. Tammy enjoyed the benefits of collaborating with the E&A team onsite. “E&A’s people frequently came to our office to work on our system. We worked very closely with Josh, Jim and Sean to customize the software to our specific requirements.  E&A made it very nice for us because all of the ideas we had about improving the system could be seamlessly dovetailed into the project while they were here delivering services for us,” said Tammy

Tammy commented on how the enhanced feature/functionality of FACTS 7.6 has helped Walker Supply gain insight into its operations. “On the financial side, we can drill down and export data for analysis,” said Tammy. “This is useful for analyzing and managing accounts receivables, general ledger activity, inventory and much more. We can organize the data and gain insight into the key performance indicators that drive success. What percentage of sales is gross profit? What are the operating costs? The availability of this kind of information helps us understand how we can improve our performance and remain profitable.”

Walker Supply’s E-Commerce Strategy Pays Dividends

In parallel with the software upgrades, E&A has enhanced Walker Supply’s e-commerce module which has played a crucial role in helping the company gain brand recognition and penetrate new markets. “When we decided to offer online ordering in the early 2000s, some of our competitors were simply giving their customers fax lists to check off the items they want and asking them to fax it in,” recalled Kent. “We decided to take the next step. Our On-Ramp online ordering system helped us offer a customized solution that made life easier for our customers.  This was very helpful during a period when we were constantly under assault from national competitors with deeper pockets.”

Recounting his experiences from the time when he first setup the e-commerce site, Kent stressed the importance of aligning the ERP system with customer needs and expectations. “We realized it wouldn’t make sense to our customers if our 3,000-plus inventory products were displayed randomly by item code sequence, so we made a modification to FACTS to sort our items by product class,” explained Kent. “We built a hierarchy around prepress, pressroom, wide format, and bindery to create a product class sequence that would be intuitive to our customers and make it easier for them to find the items they wanted to buy.” Kent went on to describe how the company also decided to make customer-specific pricing from the FACTS contract pricing database available to its customers, providing a powerful draw for its most loyal customers to frequent and use the site as much as possible.

The many hundreds of hours of planning and hard work that went into developing Walker Supply’s web site including its integration with FACTS has paid off. Today, up to 30 percent of Walker Supply’s orders are processed online, a number that compares very favorably with distributors in Walker Supply’s peer group. The benefit of offering online self-service has helped Walker Supply transcend its traditional sales territories and attract new customers from across the country, while helping the company achieve efficiencies that allow it to remain competitive through tough economic times.

For example, specific features in the e-commerce module such as ‘favorites lists’ have created additional touch points and new selling opportunities. Walker Supply’s customers can access personalized favorites lists to easily place orders for the products they want most whenever it is convenient for them to do so.  And as customers phone in to request updates to their favorites lists, Walker Supply often harvests business from unexpected sources. “There are some people who you’d never think would take advantage of online ordering but actually love it, such as the guy who works in the press room, because he can order exactly what he needs at a time that fits into his busy schedule,” remarked Kyle.

Kent testified how processing orders through the e-commerce site has allowed Walker Supply to significantly increase throughput and reduce overhead expenses. “When we added e-commerce, our sales surged but we didn’t find it necessary to add a single person to handle the extra volume,” said Kent. “Order entry errors from web orders have been virtually eliminated, and the availability of MSDS sheets online reduces administrative burden on our staff. All of this saves us a substantial amount of time and money.”

E-commerce has proven to be an asset as Walker Supply seeks to convert web leads into new business. Using web marketing techniques such as search engine optimization, Walker Supply entices click-thru’s to its web site from customers who key specific phrases such as ‘rotary trimmers’ into Google or other search tools. “Suddenly, new customers who know what they want to buy are finding us and placing orders unassisted on our web site 24/7/365. It’s great to be able to walk into the office in the morning and have orders  waiting for us to be processed!” enthused Kent.

Walker Supply has carefully positioned e-commerce within its overall sales strategy. “While  traditional sales methods are invaluable to us, e-commerce has opened new doors, helping us sell more niche products and expand our reach across the country,” said Kent.  “We can also use the web to sell our own brand products where we don’t get into direct online price wars. We’re looking to make more of these kinds of sales as our business continues to evolve.”

Walker Supply Looks Ahead

Walker Supply is defining itself as a leader in a rapidly changing industry. With its staff processing thousands of orders each month and providing exemplary service to its customers through its e-commerce sites, the FACTS system has proven to be a solid investment.

“With FACTS, we have found that we can automate more of our business processes which in turn has helped us become more competitive,” said Kent. “Sometimes we take our FACTS system for granted because it has been so reliable and stable.  We also have a very stable and reliable partner with E&A.” 

Kent credits E&A’s value-add services as an important component in sustaining Walker Supply’s system.  For example, Kent cites E&A’s user group series as an important resource that has helped Walker Supply stay abreast of emerging technology and industry trends. “It’s been very valuable to have access to E&A’s user group,” said Kent. “We talk to other people who are doing what we’re doing and learn from guest speakers who offer industry expertise.”

Most importantly, Kent gives high marks for the people at E&A who have supported his system over the years. “The E&A staff has done a good job for us. We get a great response from E&A for all of our software and hardware support issues.”

To learn more, visit the Walker Supply web sites at www.walker-supply.com and www.walkerwide.com.

Blake & Pendleton (B&P) has been providing engineered compressed air systems, pumping systems, and energy saving heat transfer systems since 1971. Headquartered in Macon, Georgia, B&P has nearly 100 employees at nine branches strategically located in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee.

B&P’s experience and engineering expertise enables it to design, install and maintain compression systems that are efficient and cost effective to operate. The broad range of products B&P represents meets virtually every industrial and institutional compressed air requirement that its customers may have.

B&P further differentiates itself from the competition by offering the most thorough and responsive service available in the industry. B&P maintains large equipment and parts inventories at each branch location to fully support its customer’s needs. B&P’s fleet of over 30 service trucks are stocked with diagnostic instruments, tools and replacement inventory to improve responsiveness and minimize downtime.

Offering the best engineered compressed air, pumping and energy systems available backed with installation, parts and service, B&P keeps their customer’s operations running efficiently.

B&P Prospers with TakeStock

For many years, B&P has relied on Earnest & Associates (E&A) for its information technology (IT) support services. Infor ERP TakeStock software, an advanced solution for distributors, has been a cornerstone of the business relationship. E&A has provided numerous implementation and support services for B&P’s TakeStock installation, including the development of the Service Lite module to help B&P better manage its extensive service and repair operations. This module filled a void in the current TakeStock solution offering at a price point that made sense for B&P. Working closely with E&A consultants Jennifer Jones and Terry Dixon, TakeStock has been configured to facilitate B&P’s growth and success over the years.

In 2007, E&A’s Ken Litaker met with B&P Owner, Allen King and System Manager, Mike Bazemore to introduce E&A’s Managed Services. At that time, B&P was working with a local firm in Macon to provide support services for its desktop computers, servers and related IT equipment. B&P also had an employee who spent a significant amount of his time managing the IT vendor relationships and providing additional technical support services as needed. Allen and Mike were intrigued by Ken’s presentation where it was explained how a remote data backup, recovery and monitoring solution could automate routine tasks, thereby reducing overall IT maintenance costs while improving system integrity and performance.

Although B&P was interested in the benefits of managed services, immediate action was put on hold until a planned upgrade to TakeStock had been completed. This latter project unfolded in 2007 when E&A installed the latest version of TakeStock on several new rack-mounted Dell servers in the Macon office. E&A’s Adam Team traveled onsite from E&A’s office in Greensboro, NC to manage the installation of the software and equipment, which included new servers for the TakeStock application, the Progress database, and a terminal server to support B&P’s branch end users.

Pleased with the success of this project, B&P renewed its interest in pursuing E&A managed services as an integral part of its long-term growth strategy. “Mike said, ‘Someday I would like to have a single vendor for computer support’,” recalled E&A’s Phil Vanderwarker, who manages E&A’s account relationship with B&P. “This was not merely to provide an alternative to its current vendor for hardware and network services. Rather, the key issue was to allow B&P to focus on what it does best; which is to service their customers, and not be distracted by servicing their IT equipment,” Phil explained.

On that point, B&P was faced with a dilemma. B&P had recently expanded into new territories, making it difficult for a single-location vendor to travel to all of its branch sites and fix routine problems in a timely or cost-effective manner; but the company’s complex systems were destined to pose increasingly difficult problems for its own employees to resolve without the assistance of outside expertise. Mike said, “We needed E&A to build out a more sophisticated system to help grow our business and yet be able to communicate with our various departments and staff so that our issues could be addressed in a timely and effective manner.”

E&A Introduces a Comprehensive Solution

In 2008, Ken began to dialogue closely with Allen and Mike. Understanding that B&P needed a more flexible and affordable solution, Ken proposed a blend of services to provide a comprehensive solution to B&P, as follows:

• E&A Managed Services – an intelligent agent would connect E&A’s remote Network Operations Center (NOC) to the B&P network. Through these agents, E&A would be able to continuously monitor the network while E&A’s Pro Recovery software would provide secure, offsite data backup and recovery services.
• E&A Network Services --- E&A’s human resources in Greenville, SC would provide scheduled onsite support services and consulting expertise for network-related issues.
• Third Party Services -- Harland Technology Services (HTS) would also be available as a third-party responder in the event of any unplanned contingencies that might require immediate, onsite support.

Importantly, E&A would serve as the single point of contact, assigning resources to resolve any issues that might arise. Mike would serve as the go-to at B&P, establishing clear rules for end users on how to engage E&A technical support and provide a strong communication link between the companies.

“We talked with B&P about how we can use technology to support any customer remotely,” recalled Ken. “We explained how B&P could empower its end users to access E&A support resources directly to get their issues resolved quickly and effectively. At the end of these discussions, Allen recognized that we could fully support their business even as they expanded geographically and their systems requirements grew more complex.”

B&P recognized the value of E&A’s solution and signed a services plan in May, 2008. “We realized that advances in technology had made it unnecessary for us to have an internal IT person,” affirmed Mike. “We also realized that having two different sources for software and technical support wasn’t a good fit; it would be better to bring those two functions together. Since E&A was already supporting TakeStock and had demonstrated it could deliver a technical services solution too, it made sense to choose E&A to support the whole package.”

Ken teamed with E&A’s Paul Muller on the project. Together, Ken and Paul visited the Macon office to install the NAS and the Pro Recovery and Pro NetGuard software on B&P’s hardware including the TakeStock server, terminal server and mail server as well as select desktop computers. Later, Paul used an Internet connection to configure and install software on the desktops at B&P’s branch locations.

The installation proved successful. B&P’s vastly upgraded system has exceeded management’s expectations, providing the secure computing platform the company needs while significantly reducing costs.

B&P Benefits from Technology

B&P lists several major benefits it has enjoyed since implementing E&A’s managed services solution.

The smart use of technology to automate routine tasks has freed up Mike’s time, allowing him to utilize his talents in other areas. “We have a much higher level of expertise supporting and monitoring our technology resources day in and day out,” said Mike. “Although we’ve had a 40 percent increase in users, today I spend only about 20 percent of my time on IT issues which is considerably less than before.”

Mike cites the reduced costs and increased accountability that results from working with a single vendor as another major benefit to B&P. “It can become very time-consuming and expensive when the software vendor blames the hardware, and the hardware vendor blames the software,” said Mike. “We have eliminated the problem of finger-pointing by using a single-source provider.”

To illustrate his point, Mike contrasts how things worked before and after. “We were an unfortunate victim of a virus several years ago,” said Mike. “Our vendors spent many hours trying to work through that process and both vendors were saying different things. We had a tough time trying to figure out what we needed to do to prevent it from happening again.”

Now, Mike says, our antivirus is kept current and we have the comfort of knowing that our system is continuously monitored and supported by E&A, thereby ensuring a consistently high level of integrity that our stakeholders can count on. “What a business owner can lose sleep over at night is the nagging worry that the system may not be adequately protected. In addition, if we experience a problem, E&A is able to remotely connect and resolve the issues quickly and with much less cost than having a local technician travel on-site,” said Mike. The remaining minor issues that require physical handling are handled internally. Mike tasks individuals with responsibility at each branch location to work with a local repair shop or send the item to Macon.

Indeed, B&P has significantly reduced its outlays for travel costs related to computer network support since it has discovered that most technical issues can be handled remotely. “We’ve increased the use of Webex sessions,” said Mike. “E&A can login and perform diagnostics work, setup new users, or do most anything else we need to do without being onsite.”

E&A has configured Barracuda spam filtering software to reduce workload and risk to the B&P network. B&P receives approximately 500,000 emails each month and only 6 percent of the total inbound messages received are valid and are permitted to pass through. The high-level security provided by Barracuda has proven essential to keeping junk email out of the system and preventing B&P’s systems from being overloaded.

E&A installed Sonicwall antivirus software to help contain viruses that might exist in the remaining emails. Sonicwall is also being installed on the laptops that are not being monitored by Pro NetGuard to prevent infected computers from connecting to the B&P network. Mike said that last month alone, approximately 1 percent of the inbound emails sent to B&P contained viruses. “If our spam filter and antivirus software was not kept up to date, the users at my company would come to a crawl in a very short period of time,” asserted Mike.

Through the NOC, Pro NetGuard software remotely monitors over 5,000 software, hardware and security aspects of B&P’s system on a 24x7x365 basis. Pro NetGuard routinely cleans B&P’s servers and workstations to remove spyware, malware, Internet debris and temp files; patched with the latest critical patches; and updated with the latest antivirus signatures. B&P has benefited from the proactive management of its systems infrastructure, reducing downtime and security incidents while providing the reports the company needs to make good decisions.

Another example of B&P gaining benefit from the proactive management of its system resources occurred in early 2009 when Pro NetGuard detected that B&P’s email server was at 85 percent storage capacity. Ken closely monitored the situation with Mike, taking prudent steps to extend the life of the machine while consulting with B&P about their options going forward. “The trick with a new server decision is to avoid wasting money by purchasing too soon, or before it becomes a necessity; nor too late, when an overburdened server might pose an increased risk to the business,” commented Ken.

On that point, Mike credits Pro NetGuard’s reporting system with boosting confidence when it came time to make a decision. “Pro NetGuard pushed the information to us at just the right time,” said Mike. “I showed Allen the stats on our email server and it made his decision to purchase new equipment an easy one.” E&A’s Tom Bulman is currently working remotely from E&A’s office in Northfield, OH to configure and install the replacement server to be located in Macon.

A Couple of Close Calls

Before implementing the Pro Recovery solution, Mike recalled how B&P had relied on an error-prone tape backup system that he feared might prove unreliable in a pinch. “We realized if we really had to do a restore from a tape backup it was going to be a very long process, and we weren’t really sure that we would get a very good backup,” explained Mike. “With Pro Recovery, we’ve got access to a secure, offsite backup that can be restored within hours to the exact point in time we want to return.”

The value of having E&A’s data backup and recovery solution was driven home by a close call B&P experienced on a particularly memorable Mother’s Day in 2008.

“We had a tornado come through here,” said Allen. “It passed by our back fence. Trees fell on the property line but narrowly missed the building. Another one hundred feet and it would’ve wiped out everything!” continued Allen, who went on to tell us that a business located less than a half mile away from B&P was completely decimated by the same tornado.

As B&P scrambled to get back online, the fact that B&P’s data remained secure and available for retrieval was a confidence booster. E&A assisted B&P as best it could until power was restored the following day. “The emergency proved the point that we did the right thing because we could get our system up and running a lot faster than we otherwise might have,” declared Mike.

B&P had other situations occur that were somewhat less dramatic but nevertheless had great potential for disruption. “We had a laptop stolen out of a service truck at night and another laptop stolen during a weekend,” explained Mike. “Upon discovery, the employee immediately called me and I contacted Ken and Paul for assistance. They immediately went into the system and disconnected the user and the laptop to prevent them from accessing our system. It was comforting to realize the technical support was readily available and our system was protected.”

B&P Achieves its Goals

With E&A’s solution in place, B&P has been able to take advantage of new opportunities as they present themselves. For example, B&P has asked E&A to quickly mobilize to help fold its new branch operation in Hickory, NC into the system. “The expansion mandates that we react quickly, and we expect our vendors to keep up with us,” said Mike. “E&A can go from workstation to workstation to establish new users in the system, install software including the TakeStock application, email accounts, everything, and do it all remotely using a Webex connection. When we need to move, E&A moves at the same speed, which is wonderful. It takes a lot of headache and concern away.”

Mike reflected on the difference that E&A’s comprehensive software application and technical support services has meant for him and B&P. “When this was put under my umbrella, I had reservations about my ability to do an effective job,” said Mike. “E&A has taken those concerns away. Individual users can send a message to TakeStock support where E&A can determine if the problem is a software, hardware or network issue. E&A can direct the request to the right resource and get the problem fixed. Through E&A, we have confidence that the appropriate people are making decisions. E&A is a single site response center so our end users don’t have to be technical experts,” he elaborated.

Importantly, B&P’s goal of using technology to support its business growth has been achieved. “E&A allows us to make better use of our time,” said Mike. “We can focus our energies on growing the company at the same time that E&A has been able to increase our use of technology. We are extremely pleased.”

To learn more about B&P, visit the company’s web site at www.blakeandpendleton.com.

Shorr Packaging Corp. has put together all the elements of a world class packaging partner. Headquartered in Aurora, IL and with full-service branch operations in Des Moines, IA, Indianapolis, IN and Cincinnati, OH, Shorr employs over one hundred of the most talented packaging professionals in the industry. Shorr adds value by training its sales and customer care representatives, equipment specialists, service technicians, packaging designers, packaging engineers, and process engineers to find ways to help customers improve products, pricing, ergonomics, design, sustainability and procurement. Simply put, Shorr identifies opportunities to take cost out of packaging and put value in.

Shorr is committed to understanding each customer’s specific requirements including specialized expertise in the food processing, medical and pharmaceutical industries. Shorr’s customers include leaders in third party logistics (3PL), distribution, manufacturing and e-commerce. Since 1922, Shorr has become well-known for developing scalable, highly efficient, and consumer-friendly solutions that are designed to take the hassle out of packaging and allows their customers to focus on what they do best.

Shorr Evaluates Technology

In January, 2006 a number of managers met with president David Shorr, who represents the third generation of Shorr family leadership, to discuss shortcomings with the company’s legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. As one of the largest independently-owned regional distributors in the country, Shorr had long been under pressure from competitors both large and small. Despite repeated attempts over the previous five years to enhance the ERP system, David and the other managers agreed that the legacy software would not be able to fully support Shorr’s go-forward strategy.

“We’re not in the business of developing software,” said Tim Milet, Jr. who is Shorr’s business application manager responsible for ERP software implementation and support. “Although we felt our past investment wasn’t a waste, the software was too big and too complex for us. Utilizing the package required a lot of manual effort, but most problematically it was not distribution-centric. We lacked functionality in a number of key processes that are important to running the most efficient distribution business possible.”

David further articulated the business case for a new system. “There’s been no letup on margin pressures in our industry,” said David. “We’ve seen how some of our competitors have gone out of business. We felt that if we could implement a technology solution to help us increase the amount of revenues produced per employee, we could afford to take business at lower margins and still remain profitable,” he explained.

Shorr formed a committee to explore the issue further. The committee requested third-party assistance from Steve Epner at Brown, Smith Wallace Consulting (BSWC) of St. Louis, MO a consulting firm with expertise in the distribution industry. “Working with BSWC, we took the unusual step of interviewing every single employee in the company,” said Tim. “We did this for two reasons. First, we wanted to validate our suspicion that replacing the legacy software would be the right decision. Second, we needed to document our requirements so that we could eventually match our business strategy with the right software.” After BSWC concluded its discovery in May, 2006 a Request For Information (RFI) was issued to 25 software companies in order to qualify the prospective vendors for Shorr’s information systems project.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Drummond at Earnest & Associates’ (E&A) office in Springfield, IL had been nurturing relationships with various Shorr decision makers, discussing business issues and sharing pertinent information from time to time over the previous several years. Carolyn learned about the RFI and asked that E&A be included on the distribution list. When Carolyn received the RFI she forwarded it to Lynn Fisher who immediately recognized the potential fit and decided that E&A would put forth its best possible effort to win the business.

Lynn, who has over twenty years’ experience specifying advanced technology solutions for many dozens of companies, understood that E&A offered the kind of distribution industry-specific solutions that Shorr was seeking. Lynn’s response to the RFI featured information about Infor ERP SX.enterprise software for distributors and documentation about E&A’s implementation methodology. Impressed with Lynn’s response, Shorr selected E&A to be among a group of six finalists who would be given the opportunity to review Shorr’s Request for Proposal (RFP) and possibly demonstrate their solutions to the full committee.

In August, 2006 E&A received the RFP which contained nearly 850 questions organized by department. The specific software feature/functionality that would be needed to support Shorr’s projected growth over the next decade had been described in detail by each employee in the company. Lynn submitted a 40-page response to the RFP but decided to do much more. Lynn phoned in and emailed Shorr to clarify and discuss specific issues. Determined that E&A would be the one to deliver the best solution, Lynn arranged to meet with the committee onsite for two days in October. Through these efforts, Lynn steadily built E&A’s credibility with the Shorr decision team.

Along the way, Lynn introduced Scott Fisher, who manages the SX.enterprise support team at E&A, to answer additional questions about technical support, training and related subjects. As the dialogue progressed, Lynn and Scott differentiated E&A from its competitors by getting to know everyone on Shorr’s selection committee and learning as much as they could about the business. With Lynn’s encouragement, the Shorr team visited an SX.enterprise installed account and spoke with other end users who provided compelling testimonials about the benefits of E&A’s solution. Additionally, Lynn coordinated a conference call with Progress Software to discuss how its database products provide world-class reliability when deploying mission-critical applications.

In January, 2007 Shorr made the decision to purchase SX.enterprise from E&A for 90 computer end users including professional support services, training and implementation. According to Tim, E&A’s upfront investment in understanding Shorr’s unique business needs had paid off. “The other guys were mainly interested in selling us software and we feared that we might end up being a small fish in a very big pond,” said Tim. “What really stood out for me was how all of our key departmental managers seemed to have a better relationship with the folks from E&A than with the others. In fact, Lynn and Scott were on a first name basis with all twenty five people on our selection team! E&A simply spent the time to get to know our people, learn our business, and talk the Shorr language. In the end, we felt that we would be working with a true business partner: somebody who had skin in the game,” Tim emphasized.

Shorr Implements E&A's Solution

After the contracts were negotiated and finalized in February, 2007 the implementation process soon began. Shorr’s IT Manager Tom Scarborough made certain that the technical infrastructure would be in place to support the SX.enterprise application. Rack-mounted servers were installed in Shorr’s access- and climate-controlled computer room including a Linux server to run the application software and four Citrix servers to support real-time data communications between the main office and the three branch locations. Shorr’s impressive network also features a wireless emergency network, tape backups, battery backups, power generators, gigabyte switches, fiber optic cables, and more. Throughout the project, Tom received able assistance from technical services manager Chuck DesJarden and network analyst, Bob Riley who superbly architected the network for reliability and future expansion.

The software piece of the project began in April, 2008 with a series of meetings including a conference room pilot and a kickoff where Lynn, Scott, Brady Bibb and Cindy Guy from E&A met with all the Shorr managers. The discussions included how key issues such as pricing, freight, costing and commissions might impact the software design and implementation. Brady and Tim were designated as the project leaders, with each serving as the point persons responsible for communications between and within their respective companies.

Brady and Tim met with Shorr managers to discuss their requirements. Based on these discoveries, Brady and Tim would agree on a software design; Brady would assign a programmer to write the modification or setup the parameters in SX.enterprise; and Brady would test the code before releasing it to Tim for a final round of testing.

Tim described how the process unfolded. “It was a shared effort between Brady and me,” said Tim. “Brady was involved in the details of every modification specified by our team. Brady often would come up with alternative suggestions; some were accepted and some were rejected. It was a tag team effort where he educated us on software best practices including how other companies use SX.enterprise, and we shared what was unique about Shorr and what we needed to do to achieve our goals.”

Tom participated in several discovery sessions and was impressed with Brady’s methodology. “Brady was very easy to talk to,” said Tom. “His knowledge about our industry helped us get going quickly. We’d ask, ‘Why do we do it this way?’ or ‘How do we do it the other way?’ Brady would think about it and then show us how we could do it, or advise us on how we could modify the software to solve the problem.”

E&A’s Leo Lang installed SX.enterprise onto a test system setup in a small ‘war room’ at Shorr’s office. Brady delivered hands-on SX.enterprise training to Tim, Sheryl Witkovich, Jackie Bailey and other key members of the Shorr team who in turn would be tasked with training additional end users. End user training was held in a larger training room for up to 25 students at a time. Tom proved invaluable, setting up the rooms with the necessary equipment and ensuring that the training experience would be as relevant to the end users as possible.

As the training process continued, Tom commented on the value of partnering with E&A as a means to get the most from the system. “I’ve been through a number of implementations and I’ve found that you’re only going to learn so much on your own,” said Tom. “You’ll tend to use what you’ve known about ERP systems from the past and overlook how to effectively use the features in the new system. But E&A can use its industry knowledge to understand your specific issues and hit the ground running. E&A can show you the things you may not have asked for that can benefit your business,” emphasized Tom.

Over the following months, the teams at E&A and Shorr worked diligently on the project, evaluating one functional area after another to determine what efficiencies could be achieved.  Changing the way that sales commissions were managed was one of many areas scrutinized for potential process re-engineering.  In an industry where price negotiations are a common practice, a crucial question was posed: should Shorr implement a fixed pricing system or stick with its current flexible pricing system? The challenge would prove to be a compelling one of how to identify and implement the best changes without disrupting the current system which had proven so successful in motivating salespeople and winning new business over the years. 

After gaining additional input from staff, E&A consultants and third-party consultants, in March, 2008 Shorr made the decision to modify SX.enterprise to replicate its legacy pricing and commissions system. 

Although it was understood that the implementation timeline would be lengthened, E&A wanted to deliver exactly what the customer wanted. Brady worked with E&A’s programmers and Cindy Guy to design and deliver many hundreds of hours’ worth of custom modifications. Working together with the Shorr staff, E&A consultants were successful in creating a design that allowed new efficiencies to be inserted with minimal disruption.

By August, 2008 Brady was ready to collaborate with Tim on testing the code and tweaking the design; this process continued through the end of October, 2008 when everyone agreed that it was time to prepare for the go-live.

Brady spent the next several months onsite providing further best practices consulting and submitting final design changes to the Shorr team. Brady led three weeks of intensive training sessions for dozens of end users in the Shorr training room. With the end users ready to begin processing, Jackie worked with Nate Rightmire to convert the data, extracting precisely what was needed from the legacy system dozens of times until the whole implementation team felt confident that everything was correct and ready to go.

In January, 2009 Brady worked through the weekend with Shorr and was available onsite for the Monday morning switchover. The event proved unremarkable, with a seamless transition to SX.enterprise achieved with virtually no mishaps or incidents.

Brady believed that the close cooperation and participation of Shorr’s team members played a crucial role in the project’s success. “Tom made sure everything ran according to schedule, and the rest of the implementation team was unbelievably supportive as well,” said Brady. “Everyone from customer service, purchasing, inventory control and accounting played their respective parts in focusing on the kind of details that ultimately paid off for us at go-live. They knew their stuff!”

Tim remarked on the overall experience including his work with E&A. “This is the most successful project I’ve ever been a part of,” said Tim. “Any other project would have been delayed far longer given the number of modifications that E&A completed within a short period of time. I can’t emphasize enough how miraculous it was that we pulled off what we did! In the end, we went live, and six months later people still come to me and say, ‘I’ve never seen a software project go this smoothly and not interrupt the day-to-day processing.’ That outcome testifies to the quality of E&A’s work.”

David commented on the success of the joint effort, crediting everyone involved in the project for their contributions. “I think using E&A in a full service capacity was a smart decision for us,” said David. “The implementation took longer than expected but I’m glad we didn’t rush it through. There were some struggles along the way as you would expect with a project of this size, but together we were able to work it out. It was a good team effort! We succeeded because we had a more competent group of managers and staff people at Shorr and we had a better business partner with E&A. In the end, we entered orders and invoiced on the first day without any interruption to our business!” exclaimed David.

Shorr Benefits from Technology

For the wholesale distributor, having access to tools that can improve processes pertaining to purchasing, inventory, warehouse, technical support and reporting are vital to improving the overall productivity and profitability of the enterprise. Remarkably, in a mere six months Shorr has gleaned a substantial number of benefits in all of these critically important areas since implementing SX.enterprise.

For example, Shorr drastically improved the daily inventory replenishment review and expedite process using the Buyers Control Center feature in SX.enterprise.  Bert Dieter, chief financial officer estimates the company has seen a significant efficiency improvement, allowing buyers more time to negotiate, expedite, and quote new business than before. “Our buyers are now looking at demand reports based on usage to help them decide what they should be buying and when,” said Bert. “With SX.enterprise, all of the relevant information needed to make intelligent buying decisions is now just a click or two away.”

John Benson is the warehouse manager in Aurora where 16 full-time employees attend to nearly 130,000 square feet of warehouse space. John described how SX.enterprise has facilitated dramatic productivity improvements within his group. “In the old system, we had to run four different software routines to get just one order processed,” recalled John. “In SX.enterprise, we simply scan the bar code from a pick ticket and all the information gets put into the Digital Shipper. We add in the freight costs and the weight, hit enter, and the work is done for us behind the scenes; packing slips, bills of lading, and labels print out automatically. It used to take us 15 minutes to do this in the old system, whereas now it takes us less than two minutes. The amount of time SX.enterprise has saved us is incredible!” he exclaimed.

In addition to Aurora, Shorr maintains 50,000 square feet of warehouse space in Des Moines, 50,000 square feet in Indianapolis and 70,000 square feet in Cincinnati. Using a single integrated system has allowed Shorr to improve its business processes and deliver a consistently high-quality experience to its customers no matter where they are serviced. “Aurora used to be the only branch that could process pick tickets automatically, but still it would be only once every half an hour,” explained John. “Our other branch managers had to run a process to get their pick tickets printed and they might have to wait up to an hour. If a customer ever came in to pick up an order at the will call window, we might have to tell them, ‘We don’t have a ticket yet’. The delay looked bad. Now with SX.enterprise, tickets are scheduled to run as fast as we need them, avoiding delays for our customers. That’s good business,” he stated.

John told us that bottlenecks in the receiving areas have been eased as well. “With SX.enterprise we can run a pre-receiving report that automatically tells us how to unload an order. For example, we might know that 500 need to be set aside to go out later today and another 500 can be put away to a specific bin location as soon as possible. The ease of doing that in itself has saved us countless hours. I’m happy!” said John.

As a full-service company that continuously innovates and seeks to differentiate itself from the competition, Shorr regularly designs Point of Purchase displays, imprints, and delivers other value-added services for its customers. SX.enterprise has proven useful for creating work orders and tracking kitted inventory, allowing Shorr to more easily process, manage and cost hundreds of custom orders. “In the old system, work orders, kits and other special orders were entered manually and often required a lot of adjustments. This was a monumental task. You had to make an adjustment for this item and that item, and then get the auditors to understand what you did,” recalled John. “Now, our CSR uses SX.enterprise to enter, say, an order for 100 display kits. The kit might consist of a folded box, two sheets of corrugated, four pieces of foam, tape and labor. The work order will automatically tell us that we need 100 boxes, 200 corrugated sheets, 400 foam corners and so on.” John went on to describe how the availability of this kind of high-quality information in SX.enterprise has improved visibility into the warehouse and reduced excess inventory.

Shorr has benefited from using advanced tools to manage direct ships. Many of the special orders that Shorr processes require large print runs or have other requirements that go beyond the scope of Shorr’s in-house capabilities. With SX.enterprise, Shorr has projected it will save thousands of hours of labor through the more efficient processing of direct ships. “Prior to SX.enterprise it took between fifteen to 45 minutes for direct ship purchase orders to be created, reviewed and sent to the vendor,” said Tim. “We have significantly improved the end-to-end direct ship from vendor process by taking advantage of the real-time integration between Order-to-Bill and Procure-to-Pay functions.  Now we can handle this same process in less than five minutes.”

Similarly, the time needed to setup new custom products has been streamlined from fifteen to less than five minutes per product. With an average of 100 new products setup per week, Shorr’s customers, sales representatives, buyers and customer service representatives will collectively save hundreds of hours with E&A’s solution.  

The smooth functioning of the ERP system has freed Shorr’s technical support team to provide higher-value services to the company.  Previously, the support staff spent a lot of time answering and fixing problems that stemmed from routine problems such as bug fixes and the like.  With the successful implementation of SX.enterprise, Shorr has moved onto tackling more strategic projects such as enhanced customer pricing, freight and logistics management, customer portals, and supplier portals just to name a few. The company benefits by getting a significantly greater return on its investment in human capital.

The availability of information in easily accessible reports has proven useful to more effectively manage the business. “It is helpful for us to have greater visibility into our business metrics,” said David. “We can access information on a more timely basis than before. For example, we can identify customers who might be in the early stages of having financial problems and correct the issue before it becomes a problem. We also look at our daily orders and invoices to see trend lines where our overall business is heading.” Tim added that the improved accuracy of sales and cost data has allowed Shorr to design and implement a vast array of critical sales and business management reports that had previously been too complex to create and keep accurate. 

With worker productivity improving across the board, David believes that Shorr is well on its way towards increasing the revenue contribution per employee, which in turn will enable the company to endure in a tough economy. “I’ve seen competitors and suppliers in our industry go out of business,” said David. “But SX.enterprise helps us to be more efficient. We can enter orders faster and get information to our customers faster. Getting more sales with the same number of people helps us to remain competitive and profitable.”

Looking Ahead

With its core SX.enterprise system up and running, Shorr plans to expand its functionality to automate more areas of the business and continuously improve its operations. For example, eBuy will provide a mechanism that will allow Shorr to gain the benefits of electronic messaging in its procurement processes without incurring all the costs associated with an EDI or XML connection. Shorr anticipates it will soon implement the Total Warehouse Logistics module to more fully automate the warehouse. David is also eyeing the eStorefront module in order to provide online self-service tools to its customers. “The hope is that our customers can order from us and we can reward them with better reports such as online order tracking,” said David.

Shorr expects its investment in technology to pay dividends for many years to come. “When we first looked into systems, we wanted something we could use for the next ten years. We asked ourselves, ‘If we could double our business, which system could accommodate that?’” said Bert. “We’ve found the answer to that question and we’d like to keep growing with E&A and SX.enterprise. We’re looking out for the future,” affirmed Bert.

To learn more about Shorr, visit its website at www.shorr.com.