To better serve their customers, high-performance countertop and custom cabinet maker Web-Don needed industry-specific business management and accounting software. In 2008, they switched to Agility, and they never looked back.
“Being a laminate and postform distributor, we needed to use the cut process and rebate tables that had become available in Agility,” said Luke Teague, Web-Don’s Operations Manager. “We can’t imagine finding another system with more in-depth laminate features.”
The cut processing features of Agility ERP were essential to Web-Don as a laminate distributor.
“Agility prevents useless cuts or mistakes by the warehouse, which saves us money by not wasting inventory,” said Teague. “When you cut product ahead of time using the system’s cut sheets, the material is ready to pick at the appropriate time with no waiting around.”
Another feature Teague said is essential is the rebate reporting. “We’re able to electronically process vendor rebate reports at month end and see our credits in the same month. When this was manual, we’d have employees in sales/pricing and accounts payable ready to leave!”
One of the most impactful changes for Web-Don is Agility’s reporting features. Throughout the company’s multiple locations, the software provides fast access to inventory availability.
“Going to a reman process versus our old bill of material process has definitely helped out with inventory control on our postform slabs,” said Teague. “We are more comfortable with the inventory counting options of Agility than with the legacy system. It’s easier to count on the fly if we notice a problem.”
Web-Don hosts Agility, which means they only need internet to access the software. “Replacing aging, massive servers every four to six years is extremely expensive, and hard to budget for,” said Teague. “With the hosted environment, our tech manager has much more time to focus on other things besides updating. When you consider equipment and annual maintenance plans, the cost is easily justified.”
While their current inventory and accounting software suffered in terms of both data inaccuracy and reliability, Harper Chambers Lumber Company remained skeptical of other systems.
“On our old CSD system, I ran a ton of reporting outside the system to ensure my numbers were correct. I didn’t trust my own reports,” says Steve Chamber, President.
“I was doing a lot of due diligence. It became my mission to find someone who didn’t like DMSi. I still can’t find them.”
Chamber began researching DMSi, and in 2005, citing a need for a secure, reliable business accounting system, Harper Chambers implemented Agility. “When we first got on Agility, I thought the system was wrong,” Chambers said. “Now I’m like, ‘what did I do wrong?’ because I know the system is right.”
Chambers said the company now has the advantage of speed. “I can instantly put my fingers on the numbers that are critical to run my business, so I can react if the numbers aren’t going the way I want.”
Inventory problems, according to Chambers, were now also a thing of the past. Agility’s functionality has changed the company’s business processes because inventory is now accurate. “It used to be that we took inventory once a year. I realized we were trying to get this thing right once a year, and I would rather have an inventory number that is 95% right every day than 100% once a year. With Agility, we began cycle counting every day. Now it’s just standard.”
Harper Chambers runs Agility in a secure hosted format, or Software as a Service (SaaS). This allows the company to eliminate servers and access the software through the internet. Not only does this lower technology costs, but it has an inherent disaster recovery advantage. “Running Agility in the hosted environment is the best money I’ve spent,” Chambers said. “If our building burnt down, I would take my laptop, go somewhere else, get on Agility and be up and running.”
As a small, family-owned business, Ronald Kirsch, owner of Kirsch Millwork, understands that his customers expect his company to be able to give more than their competitors. In 2003, the company, founded in 1957, decided to outsource certain technologies to better provide one-step distribution companies and builders with quality products.
“I looked at the time lost due to slow performance, server and back-up maintenance. I realized that for Kirsch Builders Supply to remain focused on customers, we needed to outsource time-consuming activities centering around our network.”
Kirsch tackled the problem head-on by upgrading to Agility in the hosting environment. There, technical configuration experts at a remote data center host the application and hardware as part of a monthly service agreement. Loading new releases of software, performing back-ups and system maintenance are no longer the company’s responsibility. Instead, he and his employees now focus on handling the day-to-day transactions of their growing customer base.
“When you’re talking about business management, it’s critical to find partners in the building products industry who are always developing the next generation of technology,” Kirsch said. “Outsourcing software and system maintenance gives us an easier, more efficient way to do business.”
The decision came after months of careful analysis. The perceived benefits took mere seconds – as long as it takes work orders to complete now from their previous time of two minutes.
Using Agility protects Kirsch Millwork from obsolete technology and reduces capital investments. The company now takes advantage of a high-performance server architecture. Regular maintenance and software updates are performed by DMSi, relieving Kirsch from all responsibility.
Employees can now also work remotely, a necessity in a post-Covid world. The sales team can walk into a customer’s office, go online, and complete a sale over the internet, saving paperwork, eliminating task redundancy, and speeding up delivery. For Kirsch, arming dedicated employees with the right business tools is a win for everyone.
“As an owner, I’m helping my employees. But they’re also making my company succeed by working more efficiently, which is helpful to my customers.”
Kirsch and his employees concentrate every day on delivering the right products to their distributor and builder customers. This time, their quest for improving customer experiences began by looking at their own daily processes. “Agility helps run our business. It’s important because we can’t do it alone and still compete in the marketplace.” said Kirsch.
U.S. Lumber is a privately held distributor of specialty building materials serving much of North America. The company serves customers in 15,000 local lumber yards, building supply dealers, and home improvement retailers who, in turn, serve the professional remodelers, home builders, general contractors, and DIY’ers in their local communities.
Agility’s tag/tally inventory functionality has played a strong role in increasing profitability for U.S. Lumber. Agility’s lumber architecture allows for a single item to have multiple branches, yard locations, lots, units/tags, and lengths. Every window, every logic component, and every application in the system was built from the ground up with fundamental lumber inventory architecture. By adding mobile barcode scanning capabilities to Agility, U.S. Lumber improved warehouse efficiency, time savings, and order accuracy.
“Through mobile scanning, our orders and inventory are always accurate. We eliminated the problems related to human error and the paper shuffle, saving a whole person in dispatch.”
Warehouse personnel scan or key the correct product, location, and quantity at the time they are physically picking for full units and custom tallies. When picking is done, delivery tickets can be immediately printed without waiting for the office staff to update orders.
Through BInformed, Agility’s powerful business intelligence application and dashboard, U.S. Lumber’s executives can pinpoint answers to business performance questions. They can instantly detect business trends and strategically respond to the ever-changing events occurring in distribution from anywhere in the world.
“Agility is mission critical. It runs everything from sales order entry through delivery and back-office invoicing and accounting — every facet of our business, really.” —Matt Vordermark, VP of Operations, Professional Builder Supply
Professional Builders Supply, headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina, wanted to open a second location. Because the new location would open in Wilmington in a very short period, the building material supply company needed it to be operational quickly.
Agility was critical to opening the new location. The cloud-based platform is highly scalable and only requires an Internet connection. “There was no additional hardware to purchase, and the software made it easy to add another branch,” said Steve Lochbaum, Vice President of Finance & Administration.
“Within several hours, under the guidance of DMSi implementation experts, the new branch was entering orders and doing business. Not sure if any other system, especially one run in-house, could have handled this.”
Professional Builders Supply employees at both locations access Agility from anywhere.
“It is nice because even if we lost power at the store, we could continue to function,” said Matt Vordermark, Vice President of Operations. “Even if we couldn’t print a delivery ticket because power to the printer was off, we could plug-in a hand-held printer and get a pre-printed laser delivery ticket.”
Because it is hosted in the cloud, server maintenance, backups, and software updates are handled by DMSi.
“In our business, I’m the IT department” Lochbaum said. “With the support I have from DMSi, I see no strategic reason to bring anyone else on to help with Agility.”
Agility supports Professional Builders Supply’s fundamental focus on customer service in everyday situations. “It’s fast and easy to find and enter information,” Vordermark said. “The orders are correct, and we have a lot of flexibility to get a customer in and out of our yard quickly.”
Agility’s end-to-end functionality for special order items is also a significant feature for Professional Builder Supply. “As long as you take advantage of how Agility works, you are going to know where everything is at any given time,” Vordermark said. “Our business is 50% non-stock items. Being able to have a screw or hanger or door sweep in the system and then walk right to the spot its located and physically touch it makes our life so much easier. It’s just accurate.”
Since 1978, Shepley Wood Products has served the Eastern Seaboard with integrity and success. In looking to improve the delivery process for their customers, they began searching for a solution to organize deliveries, simplify communication and increase visibility. They decided to implement DQ Technologies’ Order Delivery Tracking (ODT).
“The benefit of ODT is that we capture and measure time and distance and associating those costs at the order level,” says Tony Shepley, President of Shepley Wood Products. “This gives us true activity-based costing information where we can look at the effect of delivery cost on our gross margin.”
With ODT and Agility, Shepley has the complete package for improving their delivery process. “We track the miles of the route and determine how much it is costing us to make that delivery,” Shepley’s System Manager, John Howell, said. “Based on the truck, we have a cost-per-mile number, so we can calculate the overall delivery costs. Our general manager can watch the delivery screen and know at a quick glance exactly where we are during the day.”
General Manager Tom Dennison monitors delivery screen activity throughout the day to make important decisions related to yard staff. Using the On Time and In Full Report from Agility, he tracks how many deliveries are on time and how many are made without backorders. “We use the On Time and In Full Report to make sure we are using our resources effectively,” Dennison said. “For example, we look at staffing levels, peak times, and other factors to determine if we need to shift employees around at certain times.
With GPS tracking on all delivery trucks and sales team vehicles, as well as dynamic Geofencing around Shepley’s location and job sites, they can monitor and send information about turns, stops, speed and distance travelled back to ODT.
“All of the information in ODT feeds back into Agility, so the salesperson can open the sales order right from their desk and determine in real time if it’s been picked, checked, or delivered,” Shepley’s System Manager, John Howell said. “The other thing our sales staff can do is right click on the ODT screen. It brings up a Google map and drops a pin right where the truck is. It takes visibility to another level.”
ODT provides Shepley with a wealth of information and a standard of accountability they didn’t have previously.
“Not only are we looking for deliveries to be made on time and in full, but we are looking for reasons why they aren’t,” said Shepley. “Was it a vendor backorder, an unrealistic time period we set up, or what? ODT helps us find the answers. In the old days, you could fake it, but with Agility and ODT, it’s a higher level of performance.”
Shepley’s use of technology to improve deliveries separates them from their competitors. “Instead of saying to our customers, ‘We are a good company. Most of the time we get there on time.’” Shepley said. “With ODT, I can say ‘98.2% of the time we are right on the money – and we are working on the other 1.8%.’”
Based in McKinney, Texas, SRS Distribution has a strong national network of industry-leading independent roofing distributors serving professional roofing contractors. Knowing they were at the beginning of an aggressive growth period, SRS was faced with choosing software that would eliminate maintenance hassles and make acquisitions and upgrades easier.
“It made sense to move to Agility because through companies that we acquired, we already had experience with it as a platform,” said Sonya Wells, Senior Vice President, Information Services.
While a software decision for most companies can take years, SRS made the decision to implement Agility in the hosted environment in just two months.
“We needed a platform in place quickly. We already had a great relationship established with DMSi, which made the decision much easier,” said Wells.
“With Agility being hosted, all we need is a good internet connection, a PC, and a print server. I have set up new locations in a locally hosted environment in the past, and there is no doubt about it, it makes the process much more seamless,” Wells explained.
Acquisitions are at the core of SRS’s business model, and Agility in the cloud streamlines this intricate process. They can establish a new location in a matter of days.
“When we open a new branch, our week goes like this: On Monday, our team will have been in there the week before training them, performing a physical inventory, and converting their data into Agility. On the prior Thursday, they perform a physical inventory. On the Friday before opening, they reconcile that and finish getting open orders entered by Saturday. On Monday morning, they open as an SRS location,” said Wells.
Timber Trading Group was searching for ways to provide their sales team with more collaborative tools for their white pine lumber distribution business. As the team met with contractor yards and builder yards across New England, they realized the data management aspect of their business was more than their current system could handle.
“Long-term loyalty from our customers means managing the amount of lumber we move between the mills and reload centers. It also means quality control in our shops; and how fast we can ship it out of the warehouse,” said Dave Zappone, General Manager.
Zappone was looking for a modern system that would give his staff a live snapshot of the company’s inventory and delivery schedules and Agility inventory management software fit the bill. Furthermore, using the lumber distribution software through the internet allows Timber Trading to capitalize on their customers’ needs for instant and accurate information, with the added benefit of reduced expenses.
Today, Timber Trading’s entire IT (Information Technology) system runs at a remote data center, allowing them to pay on a metered basis. Adapting to this change ahead of the curve, Zappone first weighed the true value of hosted software to his business, including information control, reliance on technical expertise, and infrastructure upkeep costs.
“I first saw software hosted through the internet at a NAWLA trade show, and its potential was obvious to me,” described Zappone. “Agility in the hosted environment allows everyone in our office to be more mobile and productive. Our capacity to provide better service to customers has improved substantially. And as a management tool, it makes our office run a lot smoother,” said Zappone.
The instant access to information eliminates the risk of unknowingly selling units of lumber while a second prospect deliberates its procurement is significantly reduced.
“Before Agility, you checked your computer screen and printed 50 or 60 sheets of product information, or you wrote it manually before getting an answer to your prospect,” Zappone said. “Unlike many companies in the industry, no unit length is the same when we receive material. Depending on our customers’ inventory, certain length configurations are more appealing. Complete inventory access from any computer is helpful in closing the sale and keeping our customers happy.”
Timber Trading saves about $12,000 annually by reducing third-party networking expenses. Time savings from handling technical issues are also substantial, especially without having IT resources on staff. Timber Trading has more control of inventory and customer data than ever before.
In 1993, Woodwork Manufacturing & Supply began using DMSi’s legacy software, DMS+. In July 2006, the company migrated to Agility, motivated to migrate by its powerful millwork-specific functionality.
“About 99% of what we carry and build is unique,” said Rick Mitchell, Vice President of Sales. Agility’s built-in features and processes were exactly what we needed to manage the complexities of our millwork product lines and departments, including pre-finish, paint and stain, door assembly, and custom molding manufacturing.”
When it came to processing custom configured unit orders, Agility’s CAFE (Component Attribute Filtering Engine) millwork logic, coupled with non-stock template functionality for special order doors and components, virtually eliminated ordering and purchasing errors. Autoflow provides complete automated control over inventory commits and back orders.
“Every configuration decision is clearly represented in CAFE, so the process of choosing available options is intuitive and precise,” said Mitchell. “The entire transaction cycle from order entry to production to fulfillment is seamless.”
Inventory and transaction control, along with the easy access to information of Agility’s customizable Viewers, has proven to be invaluable tools for Woodwork. The company relies exclusively on the system to drive all critical business processes. Viewers, fed by real-time transaction and inventory information, make it easy to stay on top of their complex, high-volume business.
“With Agility Viewers, we know exactly where to increase margins and where to cut inventory. A snapshot of work in progress information helps us control labor and plan our workload effectively,” said Mitchell. “We are now worlds ahead. We have all the tools we need to increase our bottom line.”
