Industrial Process Equipment Group

An Activant Professional Services Success Story

Features

Activant Application Consultant Helps Shorten Learning Curve During Merger

When Industrial Process Equipment Group (IPEG) merged with another distributor, they chose to move from a less advanced operating system to their new partner's Activant solution.

Challenge:

Help employees at a St. Louis, MO-based material handling distributor learn the features and benefits of an Activant solution after a merger

Solution:

Activant Professional Services: Application Consulting

Benefits:

Reduced purchasing time by 20 percent
10 percent annual savings in inventory carrying cost
Reduced labor expenses
40 percent decrease in month-end processes

At first, management asked employees to train co-workers on the solution. That task soon proved to be too onerous: 21 people simply didn't have time to teach 30 new colleagues the day-to-day features, functionality, and nuances of the solution.

"We needed a professional to come in and show us the ropes," says Jackie Jones, purchasing manager. "Everyone was too crazy trying to get databases together and figure out who was doing what to field questions about how to work things."

To shorten the learning curve and streamline everyone's processes, IPEG management invited an Activant Application Consultant to their St. Louis, MO headquarters. "It was a great decision," Jones contends. "We needed someone who could tell us the best, most efficient, most productive ways to get our jobs done. The consultant did just that."

Automated, Paperless Processes

As someone new to Industrial Process' Activant solution, Jones wanted to learn ways to cut steps from purchasing routines, so the consultant taught her how to automate processes. "We used to allocate stock order items to their respective sales orders manually," Jones says. "The consultant taught us how to set up the solution so it would match everything for us." As a result, Jones cut purchasing time by 20 percent.

The consultant helped Jones move from a fixed control method of purchasing -- Min/Max -- to a variable control -- Up To -- for certain vendors. The move enables IPEG to maintain about 10 percent less inventory for several suppliers while meeting customer demands.

The consultant also reminded Jones that making three copies of every customer and vendor invoice was an unnecessary task that cost the company thousands of dollars in paper and printing costs. Because IPEG now keeps all documentation online, Jones realizes that unessential paperwork actually cost her company much more. "We used to pay someone to staple all of that paperwork and file it away," Jones says. "When that person left, we didn't replace her, and we're saving about $30,000 each year."

Accounting for Change

Diane Fuller, head bookkeeper at IPE, worried that numbers "weren't hitting the books right" when she first worked with the Activant solution immediately following the merger. After working with the consultant to learn more about accounting features and functionality, she knows she can trust month-end figures. The consultant also helped Fuller simplify month-end processes -- resulting in a 40 percent decrease in the amount of time she spends closing the books. "We spend so much less time trying to track things down because the solution records everything for us."

Fuller concludes: "I can do things 20 times better than I could in my old system, and 10 times better on Activant than I could before the consultant came to help us." Jones agrees. "The consultant made everything simple and easy to understand -- even for me, who spent 20 years trying to do everything by hand," she laughs.

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