Success Stories

Activant Prophet 21 Provides a Comprehensive Solution for Agricultural Distributor

While the agricultural market is often thought of as conservative, recently there has been a shift toward embracing the power of technology and transacting business online. These new generation farmers are the ideal target customers for a progressive agricultural distributor like Southern Marketing Affiliates (SMA). Using the power of the Internet in tandem with Activant Prophet 21, SMA streamlines the purchasing process, saving customers money while boosting its own bottom line.

Headquartered in Jonesboro, AR, SMA has served the agricultural market since 1964. Today, SMA distributes agriculture-related parts and supplies in 17 states in the South and Southwest. Some of their 2,500 customers include farm equipment dealers, farm co-ops, and farm supply stores.

To serve their customers, SMA has built a network of more than 300 vendors from the United States and abroad, developed a broad product line, and established warehouses in Jonesboro, AR, and Dallas, TX. The company has a sales staff of 17 associates and prints a 600-page catalogue listing all parts and their prices, with updates six times each year.

Until recently, SMA used a locally-developed enterprise software solution running on an AS 400-based architecture to manage its enterprise. The system performed its function for a time, but there were definite flaws in its operation, especially in the inventory management and accounting modules. As SMA grew and developed, it became clear that a more comprehensive and functional system would be necessary.

Choosing Prophet 21

Even before its involvement with Activant, SMA had a vision to integrate e-commerce into their business model. The SMA management team knew their next enterprise system had to feature an open architecture and data format that would allow easy export. They also knew that facilitating the transfer of business information would be key to their future success, so they wanted a system based on Microsoft SQL Server. The company also needed to maintain a consistent level of inventory. Their old system had inadequate forecasting ability and made expenses related to products difficult to track. A good handle on inventory and its costs would be necessary for SMA to continue building towards future success - Prophet 21 fit the bill perfectly.

SMA, Energized...

Prophet 21 revitalized SMA's business processes and instantly revamped SMA's inventory system. On the first day of live use, Prophet 21 enabled SMA to pinpoint several products that were significantly under priced for maximizing profit margins. Not only did the management of current items pick up, but forecasting also improved, and less paper is now wasted during the picking process.

...And Connected

Because Prophet 21 runs on the Microsoft Windows NT/2000 platform and uses SQL Server, SMA knew it could easily parlay its data into real business information. SMA did that and then took it one step further. It offered to host Web storefronts for its customers that connect to its own site SMALink. In addition to containing weather, pricing, and other agricultural news items, SMALink allows registered users access to its entire stock inventory.

This business initiative drives more SMA customers onto the Web for commerce and raises the level of customer service the company can provide for them. Ultimately, more customers on the Web will increase SMA's ability to use more efficient Web-based purchasing applications, such as Activant Trading Partner Connect, an Internet trading network.

The Future

SMA is a business expanding both in the size of its operations and in the scope of its vision for the future. With Prophet 21 as its information backbone, SMA is moving agricultural purchasing into the digital age. The company seeks to simplify business processes using technology to streamline purchasing and pass these savings to its customers. SMA has the foresight to show its customers the strong financial incentives to keep their technology current and to help them realize it as well. Prophet 21 helps SMA provide its customers with more in-depth business information and its flexibility opens the window for powerful e-commerce applications such as Trading Partner Connect.

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