Success Stories

When Owner Bill Sheppard and his employees opened the doors of Sheppard Enterprises, Inc., for the first time in 2004, they knew it would be a little while before the company became profitable. As is the case with most new business ventures, they expected to work in the red for some time as they incrementally expanded their customer base, improved operations, and increased their bottom line.

What they didn't expect, however, was the company turning a profit nine months ahead of schedule - a milestone Sheppard believes was accelerated with Activant Prophet 21.

"Right now, we're ahead of our business plan," he says. "I'm sure we would have eventually gotten here with any business system, but Prophet 21 dramatically decreased the time it took for us to become the company we are today."

A Cumbersome Solution

Founded in January of 2004 in Oaks, PA, Sheppard Enterprises sells primarily to wholesale distributors in the janitorial, paper, and sanitary supply sectors that in turn sell to hospitals, restaurants, hotels, schools, etc. According to Sheppard, 90 percent of his company's business falls into the jansan and paper industries, with 8 percent in food service and 2 percent in miscellaneous and packaging.

While it's clear that Sheppard Enterprises has quickly carved out its own niche in the industry, Sheppard and his team had a much harder time finding an enterprise software solution that would fit the company's expanding needs.

"We opened our doors with five employees and used off-the-shelf accounting software to manage the business," remembers Sheppard. "Eight months later, after doing research and talking to other people in the industry, we thought Stanpak would be the answer."

Sheppard Enterprises only stuck with Stanpak for 14 months, however, before migrating to Prophet 21 in the fall of 2005. According to Sheppard, Stanpak had problematic reporting functionality and module integration, making it a cumbersome solution for his growing business. "And there was no flexibility in Stanpak," he adds. "Whatever you wanted to do, you had to do its way - there was no such thing as custom reports, alternative data formats, anything like that."

Making the Switch

It should come as no surprise, then, that Sheppard cites Prophet 21's flexibility and reporting capabilities as two of the reasons behind their decision decided to migrate. "Since Prophet 21 is Windows-based, navigation is incredibly easy and you can use industry standard add-on programs," he says, "but the ease of reporting was a huge factor for why we made the switch."

In addition to Prophet 21's standard reporting capabilities, Sheppard also utilizes Knowledge Management Center (KMC), an executive information solution that takes data from Prophet 21 and provides a snapshot of key areas such as sales, inventory, accounts receivable, and more.

"KMC's reports are just easier to understand," says Sheppard. "You can see the information in any format you like - graphs, charts, raw data - and that's an important thing for someone like me who isn't the most computer-savvy guy around."

Hands Down

While Sheppard uses KMC to stay on top of his business at a high level, the company depends on Prophet 21's e-mail alert functionality to keep him aware of the ground-level issues that can pop up from time to time. For example, whenever profit margins don't meet company standards, the solution automatically e-mails members of the team to inform them of the discrepancy.

"I can't tell you how much money the e-mail alerts have either made or saved us," he adds. "They represent the difference between running a report a week after the fact and proactively controlling an issue before it becomes a major problem."

Sheppard continues: "We use alerts in every segment of our business. The credit department gets them when payments go beyond a certain number of days. Purchasing gets their alerts for stock-outs and non-stocks. The general manager gets alerts when orders are below a certain size, and so on."

According to Sheppard, its functionality like e-mail alerts that has enabled his business to exceed expectations, and he has the numbers to back it up: in the past year, Sheppard Enterprises' sales have increased 40 percent, while inventory dollar value has gone up just 10 percent - a number which looks even smaller when industry-wide price increases are taken into account.

Numbers aside, Sheppard is reminded that moving to Prophet 21 was the right decision every time he hears an employee talk about the solution. "Sometimes we'll have prospective Activant customers in-house to see Prophet 21 in action, and just hearing my employees talk up the benefits of the solution with the visitors reinforces my decision," he concludes. "There isn't a single person working at Sheppard Enterprises who doesn't prefer Prophet 21, hands down, to the systems we've had in the past."

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