Brockway-Smith Company (BROSCO) is the leading distributor of quality doors, windows, and millwork products in the Northeast. Custom orders are a key part of BROSCO’s business, and they run like clockwork thanks to Agility software’s production and order management capabilities.
Agility manages every stage of production, auto-transfers required materials from other branches, and provides accurate delivery dates on every custom job.
Western Materials has been serving general and specialty contractors across the Pacific Northwest for over 50 years. The company provides specialty and general contractors with the best quality products available and exceptional service.
As a multi-location dealer with a large catalog and multiple locations, Western Materials uses Agility’s centralized purchasing features to save time and make more effective buys.
In addition, Agility’s reporting features empower Western Materials to provide their customers with information to help their own businesses.
Beisser Lumber is a full-service dealer serving builders and contractors across Iowa for over 60 years. When the company needed to replace their antiquated point of sale system, Beisser wanted to find a good partner as well as good software. They selected DMSi due to DMSi’s exclusive focus on the building materials industry and commitment to customer success. Watch the video to learn more about Beisser Lumber’s partnership with DMSi, and their experience with Agility software.
Aetna Plywood is a leading wholesale distributor of building products serving contractors, fabricators, and architects across the Midwest.
As a large company with customers spanning many territories, Aetna wanted to centralize account information, create a lasting record of each account’s activities, and improve inter-department communication.
Building Results CRM from DMSi Software delivered everything Aetna had in mind and more.
Instead of relying on notebooks, emails, and spreadsheets, Aetna’s sales staff now finds everything they need in a central location. As Kim Diaz, Aetna’s system administrator, explains, “Everything to do with a customer is captured in the CRM: contacts, buyers, sales analysis, merchandising dollars, how many times we’ve called them. It’s all right there in one bucket.”
Centralizing information has improved collaboration among staff. “There’s a lot more communication with inside reps,” says Diaz. “If a customer calls our inside sales desk, the inside rep checks the CRM and sees everything happening with that account.” The benefits go beyond Sales; communication has improved across departments. “If a customer tells their rep, ’I had three sheets of damaged goods last week,’ the rep enters a note in the CRM, tags the warehouse manager, and the warehouse manager is notified about it right away – all without sending separate emails.”
Aetna is seeing successful adoption of the platform among its sales staff. One reason Diaz credits for the success is the voice-to-text feature in the CRM’s mobile app. Instead of typing notes, Aetna’s reps simply dictate them by speaking into their smartphone. “95% of their work is done in the mobile app,” says Diaz. “As soon as they leave a customer meeting and before they drive away, they dictate their activity notes, tag people, and schedule follow-up tasks using the app. It takes 5 minutes per appointment.” The app’s ease and convenience make a huge difference in adoption.
In addition to contact management, Building Results CRM helps sales reps set and track goals, gain better account insight, and grow their pipelines. Calendar and territory management features help reps manage time and focus on their priorities. “Now they’re seeing more customers in a day than they used to,” says Diaz. “Every day they have a plan, they know where they’re supposed to be.”
The centralized calendars and customer records are valuable tools for Aetna’s sales managers to guide their teams. Instead of open-ended questions, managers review each rep’s scheduled activities and logged results. “Managers can see in a snapshot what each rep is doing every week. They can make sure each rep has a plan, knows where they’re going,” says Diaz. “The manager and the rep are looking at the exact same thing, so it’s a more focused conversation.” Managers are better able to help their reps focus on high-value activities instead of constant firefighting.
Aetna also uses Building Results CRM to track sales-related information, such as merchandising. “It’s a big deal for us,” says Diaz. “We spend a lot of money on merchandising. Now we can run a report to see who has displays, which ones need replacing, how much we’ve spent. We can track it all in one place.”
Edgebanding Services Inc. (ESI) is a seven-location distributor of products to the cabinetry, furniture, and countertop industries. Delivering a smooth customer service experience is a priority for ESI, and it’s no small feat in light of the company’s high volume of transactions and large customer base.
Agility helps ESI provide exceptional service with sales tools that give reps immediate access to customer information, order histories, and account details.
With three locations in the northeastern U.S., Holt & Bugbee manufactures and distributes rough sawn planks, finish dimension planks and boards and custom finished and unfinished moldings. Their customer base is approximately 2,500 companies and in any given year, they will sell to about 1,500 of them. In order to give their customers the service they deserve, Holt & Bugbee needed an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that had lumber specific functionality and gave them speed and inventory accuracy. To achieve this, Holt & Bugbee turned to Agility, DMSi’s business accounting software.
In 2008, Holt & Bugbee implemented Agility, since then they have improved inventory accuracy because of the many lumber specific features. The end tally functionality tool, allows them to efficiently track hardwood unit tallies by the thickness, width and length of every board or by total board footage per length.
“We gravitated to Agility because of the inventory functionality, specifically being able to tally lumber”
Bill Robinson, Holt & Bugbee’s IT systems manager
Agility’s inventory functionality and accuracy made a big difference to the company, but it was what they could do with that information that really made an impact. By using Agility’s end tally tracking solutions, Holt & Bugbee found an easy and quick way to track lumber. The hand-held technology seamlessly brings critical lumber inventory information into Agility for tighter inventory control; from receiving to remanufacturing, all the way from raw green lumber to finished products.
“Most software out there doesn’t deal with the lumber aspects so well. We chose Agility for the inventory control, mobile processing, reporting and many other critical features”
Holt & Bugbee look to Agility not only for inventory accuracy through the end tally features, but improved customer service. “I definitely think there are some cost-savings from Agility that have helped us with the downturn,” Robinson states. “Right now, everything is about being able to turn faster. How fast can you ship and manufacture.
If you aren’t quick enough, customers will go to someone else – Agility has given us that speed advantage”
Agility has helped Holt & Bugbee automate processes. “It has cut a lot of time off processes and taken a lot of manual list implementations out,” Robinson said. “The ability to import and export Agility data to Excel is a fantastic tool. You can e-mail it back and forth to customers, vendors and employees and manipulate it. Someone who used to use a handwritten list can put it right into Excel, edit it and have it done in 5 minutes versus typing out a whole list.
“Technology is ever evolving, it never stops. You just have to go with the flow and get there. There is a lot of technology that DMSi keeps bringing out to the forefront.”
