Success Stories

When you have been in business for nearly a century, change is inevitable. For evidence, look no further than Seco Tools Inc, formerly Seco-Carboloy.

Founded in 1925 as the tungsten carbide development wing of General Electric, the Carboloy department existed for over 60 years under G.E., until they became a member of the Seco Tools family in 1987. Seco Tools manufactures a complete range of high performance turning, milling and drilling tools for use in a variety of metalworking industries.

With a customer base that includes a wide variety of industrial distributors, Seco Tools understands the importance of offering products and services in a method that streamlines communication while reducing transaction costs. They found their answer in Activant Trading Partner Connect.

"Since many of our distributors operate an Activant solution, it made sense to implement Trading Partner Connect as a source for electronic ordering," explains Craig Berryman, Seco Tool's electronic commerce technology developer. "Trading Partner Connect gives us an efficient, trouble-free way of conducting business. This helps to make Seco Tools easy to do business with."

Relationships Made Easy

Although Seco Tools was one of the first manufacturers to go live on Trading Partner Connect, they did not have to wait long for distributors to find them on the network. "We get notified when a distributor is interested, and Activant takes the necessary steps to get them setup," says Paul Kieta, manager of distribution and business development. "Once they have the equipment and connections in place, we run a test, and can go live in about a day."

Prior to establishing a connection on Trading Partner connect, distributors have their inventory rationalized, which streamlines the trading process by allowing them to communicate with manufacturers using their own item codes. Rationalization allows Seco Tools to receive and process transactions automatically, and re-deploy their workforce to duties other than data entry. "Establishing an e-commerce relationship used to require extra steps on both ends, but Trading Partner Connect has made many of those steps a non-issue," Berryman says.

To take advantage of the simplicity of their distributors' rationalized catalogs, Seco Tools utilizes Trading Partner Connect's secure Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) capabilities to both send and receive order acknowledgements, invoices, and more. "We don't have to take the time to rip and read orders," explains Berryman. "Trading Partner Connect allows us to take the information a distributor sends us and process it through our system automatically, without anyone touching it."

"We have every order automatically checked for errors, and we have found that Trading Partner Connect eliminates the majority of errors," Kieta adds. "Less than one percent of these orders have an error, which means nearly every order can go out without intervention."

New Name, Same Commitment

Recently, the company whose genesis goes back to early industry scientists experimenting with tungsten carbide will undergo yet another change. Seco-Carboloy officially became Seco Tools Inc., and while Carboloy will no longer be used in the name, the commitment to manufacturing quality products and providing exceptional service will not.

"Our objective as Seco Tools will be to continue to grow sales around the world, and we plan to use Trading Partner Connect as a tool to reduce operational costs, so the maximum amount of investment can be made in sales and product development," Kieta says. "We see it as a key to reducing transaction costs and improving customer service, so we can focus on building our market share."

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