DMSi’s Agility Helps Boston Cedar Achieve
Maximum Efficiency and Profitability

According to their mission statement, DMSi Software exists to help their building product distribution software customers achieve maximum efficiency and profitability. “DMSi has seen nothing but rapid growth and high customer satisfaction as a result of our relentless focus on the specific needs of the forest and building products industry.  This is a great industry to serve and our focus will not change in my lifetime”, states Cal German, DMSi Software President. And, given the positive results of their customers, like Boston Cedar & Millwork, DMSi’s formula for mutual success is working.

Boston Cedar, a DMSi customer since 1998, attributes much of their growth and success to DMSi Software’s technological advancements, customer service, and best practices.  “With DMSi, we are able to keep costs down and increase efficiencies to provide our customers added value along with our quality products,” explains Joyce Hunt, Boston Cedar & Millwork controller.  “For Boston Cedar, DMSi’s customer service is key. Agility software is industry-specific and supported by knowledgeable staff specializing in lumber and building material related issues. Because DMSi knows how lumber businesses work, we have a high comfort level with the assurance we are using the best practices for our industry.”

When Boston Cedar implemented DMS+ legacy software nearly a decade ago, they realized many benefits from DMSi’s built-in, industry specific software functionality and largest collection of people dedicated to these industries. These benefits include the depth, service, and integration Boston Cedar needed to improve customer service, streamline business processes, and enhance asset performance. Thus, when DMSi developed a truly new WindowsTM solution in Agility, Boston Cedar chose to transition to their hosted environment to achieve optimal benefits. Additionally, they supplemented the built-in lumber specific functions of Agility with the added benefits of Mobile Solutions and BInformed.

By completely eliminating hardware and software components through Agility’s hosted environment, Boston Cedar has been able to focus on core business initiatives without the need for database expertise. Through a hosted environment, Boston Cedar’s data and application software reside on a remote, secure, expertly maintained Data Center.“ As the cost of IT staff steadily increase, hosted solutions help us drive our costs down, provide complete disaster protection and keep up with the latest technology. We don’t even think about it,” explains Hunt. “And, it’s great for our salesmen who are now able to access our database on the road … wherever, whenever.” 

Agility’s tag/tally inventory functionality, coupled with the additional benefits of Mobile Solutions, played a strong role in increasing Boston Cedar’s profitability. At the heart of Agility is a lumber architecture that allows for a single item to have multiple branches, multiple yard locations, multiple lots, multiple units/tags, and multiple lengths embedded in its core design. Every window, every logic component, and every application in the system was built from the ground-up to employ this fundamental lumber inventory architecture.  By adding Mobile barcode scanning capabilities to Agility, Boston Cedar improved warehouse efficiency, time savings, and order accuracy.  “Through mobile’s scanning, our orders and inventory are always 99.9% accurate. We completely eliminated the problems related to human error and the paper shuffle; saving a whole person in dispatch,” says Hunt. Warehouse personnel simply scan or key the correct product, location, and quantity at the time they are physically picking for remanufactured and custom orders. Operating in real time through wireless connectivity to Agility allows office staff to update sales orders and generate pick files for the warehouse to work from. When picking is done, delivery tickets can be immediately printed without waiting for the office staff to update orders.  The final result of complete inventory control is better customer service.

Through BInformed, Agility’s powerful business intelligence application, Boston Cedar’s executives can interactively zero-in on answers to business performance questions, instantly detect business trends, and strategically respond to the ever changing events occurring in distribution.  BInformed’s robust tools support quick decision making and standardizes reporting processes — from multiple sources — throughout building material organizations. Hunt describes, “Whether he’s [our owner] is at home, in the office or anywhere else in the world, he can easily manage the business with BInformed’s complete dash board view.”

Nearly 400 of North America’s top suppliers use DMSi software to efficiently manage daily activities in nearly 1,100 distribution yards, warehouses and offices; and have experienced similar successes to Boston Cedar. For over 30 years, DMSi has been the leading business management solution for building product distributors and lumber wholesalers. For more information about DMSi software, call 402-330-6620 or visit www.dmsi.com.

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