Success Stories

Activant Prophet 21 Provides the Right Solution for Growing Distributor

When Brandon Childress graduated from the University of Georgia in the late 1990's, his father, Brud, owner of Mechanical Equipment Co., had an assignment for him. Childress' mission was to find the $30 million-a-year, eight location, Lawrenceville, GA-based HVAC supply distributorship an enterprise software solution.

Childress, who graduated with a degree in business management, admittedly had very little experience with computers - and his father had never used a PC. So, he started his search with one major criteria: the enterprise software solution had to be easy to use.

Childress took his mission seriously, and studied literature on several enterprise software solutions for distributors. He researched numerous systems, but was disappointed by many of them. "Some of them had a Windows-look, but weren't really Windows-based," he says. "Some didn't even have any inventory control." But then, he "stumbled" upon Activant's name in an industry article. From there, his search was easy.

"Because it did pretty much everything we wanted it to do, it was easy to pick Prophet 21 and Activant over all of the other solutions," says Childress, now vice president of Mechanical Equipment Co.

Green and Black Screens

Before moving to Prophet 21, Mechanical Equipment was on a "totally dot matrix, green and black screen" system that performed mathematical calculations but did little else. "There was no mouse involved whatsoever. It was like using a calculator," recalls Childress. It also wasn't developed with the distribution industry in mind, "In our old system you could do some crazy things," he laughs. "Our old system didn't have the absolute zero factor; you could go up and down in inventory, positive and negative. You could actually pull stock from negative inventory levels."

When they went live on Prophet 21 in 1998, Childress said he had concerns about training his staff on the new solution since almost half of the 25 users had never used a PC. But, everyone - including his father - learned quickly. "My father struggled with the mouse at first; he was a little scared of it," laughs Childress. "But right now, he's probably one of the top five users."

Data They Can Trust

Prophet 21 has allowed Mechanical Equipment employees to know what inventory they have on hand - and provides data they can trust. "Now we get to look at our sales figures and know that they're real time and up to the minute. The solution doesn't allow us to dip below zero" Childress says. "Now we know exactly what's available, what's missing, and what we need to order."

Once Mechanical Equipment began utilizing Prophet 21's purchasing module they saw their inventory levels drop from $3.5 million to $3 million, and turns are up to nine times a year. "We're right at our goal with inventory," says Childress. "With the purchasing module, we've found a way to purchase inventory that now makes a lot of sense. It's been the biggest value anybody here has seen. We have less inventory and we are servicing our customers better."

"We had a central purchasing agent, and he quit right when we started using the purchasing module of Prophet 21," Childress continues. "We haven't had to replace him, so there is an additional savings." Now, since the purchasing process is so easy, a group of people handles it.

Also reduced is the number of people processing accounts. Prior to moving to Prophet 21, there were at least two people processing accounts receivables and two people processing accounts payables. Now, there's only one person on each side. "What used to take four people now takes two," Childress says. "We're to the point now where everyone is doing everything right and everything is flowing in and out very smoothly. Most of my time is now spent looking for more strategic things to do".

Life as the IT Guy

At Mechanical Equipment Co., there is no IT department. Instead, Childress acts as the Activant system administrator. "I run the system and I don't have any computer background whatsoever," he confesses. "You don't have to hire a million-dollar-a-year IT guy to maintain the solution, and you can still grow."

Childress maintains that the relationship between Mechanical Equipment and Activant will be a long one. "We're definitely going to stay with Activant," he says. "Not only do we like it and are seeing some good returns and results, but we also like to think that we've put ourselves on the cutting edge of technology," he says. "We're ahead of a lot of our competitors, and vendors as far as technology goes, and we're definitely ahead of our customers. Activant is going to keep us going forward."

For more information on Activant's enterprise software solutions, please fill out our Web Contact Form.

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