Success Stories

This is the second case study in a series on Reed City Power Line Supply's experience with Activant Prophet 21™.

When Reed City Power Line Supply, a full-line electrical distributor based in Reed City, MI, went live on Activant Prophet 21 and its Wireless Warehouse Management Solution (WWMS) in early 2005, some of the company's employees did not share in the excitement of Director Theresa Rasor and Project Manager Ted Hoffman.

"It was tough when we first went live," remarks Rasor. "We had some employees who resisted the change because they were comfortable with the old way of doing things."

The "old way of doing things" involved an Activant� legacy solution, Acclaim, which Reed City had relied on for nearly a decade. According to Hoffman, the switch to Prophet 21 became a necessity: "We simply outgrew Acclaim - our customers' demands were increasing, and it was getting harder for us to keep up."

Both Rasor and Hoffman knew that once Prophet 21 and WWMS were in place, and the employees had a chance to interact with them, the added productivity would speak for itself.

Creating Timesavings

A multi-branch distributor that has been serving customers in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania since it was founded in 1963, Reed City not only supplies all of the parts it takes to put up a line or a sub-station, they also manufacture poles and provide construction services.

It follows that with such a multi-faceted and complex operation, Reed City's management team needs to do everything they can to streamline operations and increase productivity, and for that they look to Prophet 21.

"Everybody's just as busy as they were before we switched to Prophet 21," says Hoffman, "but the work is more productive now, because the solution has simplified many everyday tasks."

For example, in their old solution Hoffman had to spend at least two hours a day managing the billing of their largest customer. Now, by utilizing Prophet 21's import manager, he only needs an hour out of one day to deal with the 20 or so, 500-line orders that come in each week.

According to Rasor, Prophet 21 created similar timesavings in accounting, where balancing the general ledger went from an hour-long process to a five-minute peek. "Before implementing Prophet 21, our general ledger never balanced with our stock status report, and someone had to spend time every day figuring out why," she explains. "Now they almost always balance, and if they don't, we can quickly find the problem using the solution's audit trail functionality."

Better Than Before

Another process that Prophet 21 has helped Reed City streamline is closing out a month. On their previous system, employees would have to come in for an extra five hours to help with month-end, and no one could work in the solution between five o'clock on the last day of the month and midnight the following day.

"An electrical distributor should never have to go that long without access to their solution," remarks Rasor. "If a storm comes through and knocks out power during month-end, we can't afford to tell our customers, 'sorry, we'd like to help you, but we won't be able to view our inventory for another few hours.'"

Prophet 21 has completely automated Reed City's month-end process, meaning employees don't have to come in after hours, and the solution can be readily accessed in the event of an emergency.

Hoffman sums up Reed City's overall experience with Prophet 21: "I don't think there's anything we haven't been able to do with Prophet 21, and many of the things we could do before, we do better now."

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