Success Stories

Parallel Growth

Since being named the president and CEO of IDC-USA, the world's largest bearing and power transmission cooperative, in 2000, Jack Bailey has had to deal with a challenge most distributors will never have to face.

How do you grow your business when the only customers you sell to happen to be members of your company? "We're unique in that we're owned by our customers," explains Bailey. "The only companies that can buy from us are shareholders in the cooperative."

IDC-USA started as an avenue for a handful of independent distributors to level the playing field against some of the large, national chains by combining purchases for volume discounts, but it has since evolved into a world-class cooperative that distributes its own product and offers a myriad of value-added services to its member-owners.

According to Bailey, the growth of the business over the years runs parallel with IDC-USA's utilization of technology. "We're doing twice as much business as we were in 1996," he says. "That means improvements in our technology have allowed a static number of people to accomplish twice the work in the same amount of time.

"Everything moves through technology - it's become our central nervous system."

One of Many

Upon first glance, Bailey may seem like an unlikely candidate to lead a bearings and power transmission cooperative. His first-hand knowledge of distribution was in an unrelated industry - he was a zone manager at Ford motor company for six years - and he practiced business law prior to joining IDC-USA.

Look again though, and Bailey's background reveals him to be uniquely suited for the position. "I represented a lot of distributors and cooperatives in my law practices," says Bailey. "When IDC-USA named me general counsel and COO in 1997, my familiarity with both the distribution and cooperative business models made it a good fit."

Although he officially joined the Indianapolis-based cooperative in 1997, Bailey's experience with IDC-USA goes back to 1990 when he began representing the company as outside counsel. In the years since, he's watched the business open a local distribution center, expand to a second in Dallas, then consolidate the two into a world-class facility in Indianapolis that also serves as their national headquarters and houses IDC University.

"IDC University is just one of many value-adds we offer our member-owners," remarks Bailey. "They can come out to our headquarters and take hands-on courses designed to foster professional and organizational development. They get homework, quizzes, exams - the whole experience."

In addition to maintaining a focus on the initiatives and value-added services IDC-USA provides, Bailey recently spearheaded an evolution in technology, with the company migrating from Activant Acclaim to Activant Prophet 21™.

Just the Facts

A Windows-based, SQL Server solution, Prophet 21 was built from the ground up to help distributors increase sales, improve customer service, and reduce costs. Since going live on the solution in August of 2006, Bailey categorizes the improvements IDC-USA has seen under a single term: efficiency.

"As more and more product becomes commoditized and margins shrink, you've got to keep costs down by improving efficiencies, and one of the best ways to do that is with good technology," says Bailey. "That's what Prophet 21 has brought to the table."

To illustrate, Bailey cites ways in which Prophet 21 has improved IDC-USA's handling of supplier price changes and warehouse picking. Since Prophet 21 can automatically load price changes from a data storage device, employees don't have to waste time on manual data entry. "When we talk about updating pricing now, we're talking in terms of minutes instead of hours," he says.

Their warehouse has become more efficient as well. Since IDC-USA represents more than 60 manufacturers, it's not uncommon for member-owners to place extremely large stocking orders in excess of 50 pages. Prophet 21 expedites the handling of large orders by printing out pick tickets in bin location sequence.

"Instead of having to bounce around the warehouse like ping pong balls, our distribution center associates are able to pick orders in a single sequence," Bailey says. "Prophet 21 has cut the time it takes to pull orders in half, which means we're getting stock out the door much quicker than we did in the past."

Helping Bailey keep tabs on IDC-USA's efficiencies is Activant's executive information solution, Knowledge Management Center (KMC). By providing high-level views of his business with the capability to drill down into specific areas, KMC keeps Bailey up-to-date on where the business is, and where it's heading.

"I'm a 'just the facts' sort of guy, and KMC organizes the data from our Prophet 21 solution in such a way that I'm able to easily identify trends," concludes Bailey. "It's one more tool from the Activant bag of tricks we can leverage to better our business."

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