August 2011
DMSi’s Solutions Help Snavely Answer Business Performance Questions
BInformed, from DMSi, is a powerful Business Intelligence application that allows Snavely Forest Products to take data driven business decisions to a new level. Using BInformed, Snavely slices and dices information from their Agility ERP system for a crystal clear picture of their business. “We chose BInformed because of its flexibility and to enhance our Agility investment,” Snavely’s IT Director, John Lewis said. “You can easily change your drill down and reporting criteria. It is simple to modify a report to see product group, customer or supplier. It is very user-friendly and intuitive.”
Snavely Forest Products is a wholesale lumber and building products distributor and NAWLA member based out of Pittsburgh, PA. The company has been a longtime DMSi software user, initially using the legacy system DMS+ and then upgrading to Agility in 2006. Agility is a comprehensive, modern business system designed specifically for the building products industry. DMSi’s BInformed tool allows Snavely to transform the vast volume of Agility ERP data into information that leads to better decisions. With 30 users on BInformed, Snavely is one of almost 100 DMSi customers using it to interactively zero in on answers to business performance questions, instantly detect trends, and strategically respond to the ever-changing landscape of their businesses.
BInformed has a suite of standard applications, including: Inventory, Sales, Accounts Receivable and Supplier Analysis analytics and an Executive Dashboard. “We use BInformed in many areas: sales reporting, historical sales analysis and everything that goes along with that, calculating customers’ rebates, budget forecasting for the upcoming year and inventory management,” Lewis said. In addition to the standard applications, BInformed provides a development environment to create custom applications and views.
BInformed’s Inventory Analysis provides Snavely one-click strategic insight into trends, turns, earns and GMROI. “With the economy and the way things are right now, there is a push to reduce expenses. Inventory can tie up a lot of available dollars, so inventory management has been identified as our top critical focus,” Lewis added. “With BInformed, we can identify slow moving and dead items and figure out what to do with them.”
Because inventory management is one of Snavely’s key focus areas, they have created custom views in BInformed to take inventory management even further. “Our users like using BInformed, and once they realize what they can do with the information, they want to do more,” Lewis added. “This led us to develop some of our own custom views such as a specialized inventory view.” The custom view Snavely built identifies what percentage of inventory is turning less than once, twice or three times a year. “It helps us measure turns by percentage and dollars and it is an easier way to get information,” Lewis said.
In another example of customizing BInformed views, Lewis explains, “We flag new items in the system, and use a couple of BInformed documents to track them separately from core products. We have customized the views based on time frame and product type to determine aging and profitability to help us make informed decisions about having the right items in stock to ultimately improve sales.”
BInformed has something for everyone. With the Sales Analysis tool, sales managers and reps have current and historical sales, margin and margin percentages information to quickly modify strategy and minimize lost opportunities. BInformed’s Accounts Receivable Analysis helps spot accounts with potential problems transforming data from Agility into actionable information. Another standard application is the BInformed Supplier Analysis which allows users to quickly see all data related to vendor performance including fill rates and on time delivery.
Many DMSi customers credit BInformed with providing the information they needed to make quick, intelligent decisions that have been crucial to successfully weathering the economic downturn. In a world where it seems like every decision is critical to basic survival, tools that transform data into information are a basic necessity.
About DMSi Software
DMSi Software is a privately held company providing software to nearly 400 building materials companies in North America. Since 1976, DMSi Software has consistently empowered its users to become more productive, competitive and efficient. For more information on DMSi Software, please call 800-347-6720 or visit dmsi.com.
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