Success Stories

Activant Prophet 21 Increases Flexibility and Capability

When most people think of the Silicon Valley in California, they think electronics. That's just fine with Valin Corporation, specialists in fluid and gas handling, measurement, and control components. As it turns out, chipmakers and electronic semiconductor equipment manufacturers are Valin's largest customers. The other staples of the region, biotech, pharmaceutical, petroleum, energy, chemical, and refinery industries comprise the remainder of Valin's extensive customer list.

Founded in 1974, Valin has grown with the electronics industry, providing products, services, and engineering support for fluid handling, process measurement, analysis, automation, and control. The company now serves the entire state of California with an office and distribution center in the Los Angeles basin to the south of its Sunnyvale headquarters.

Rapid Response Team

The ability to respond quickly to a constantly changing business climate is the key to Valin's success. According to Don Lightbody, executive vice president and CFO of Valin, the strength of the company is tightly coupled to its ability to adapt quickly to the needs of customers. That's as true for the infrastructure that supports the business as the products and services it provides.

According to Lightbody, in order to meet the demands of their marketplace, Valin's enterprise software must meet two critical criteria: "The software has to be able to run the business and the company that supplies the software must have staying power... The strength of the software and the software provider's longevity go hand-in-hand. The worst thing that can happen is to have your system go down and the company isn't there to support its product."

A Smooth Transition

Valin's relationship with Activant dates back to 1982, when the company purchased its first Activant solution. By 2001, after nearly 20 years of upgrading their UNIX platform, Valin decided to migrate to a Windows NT/2000 solution.

Like any company focused on obtaining the best available product and support, Valin management began looking at various enterprise software providers and their products. Not surprisingly, they discovered that Activant Prophet 21 best suited their needs. According to Lightbody, the providers Valin looked at were not distribution oriented or focused in the industry. "They didn't understand the distribution industry, that's for sure," said Lightbody of the other providers. "They're just not a good fit for a typical distributor."

Although the look and feel of Prophet 21 differs greatly from their UNIX-based solution, Valin employees adapted rapidly to Prophet 21's graphical user interface (GUI). Within 30 days of going live with Prophet 21, the Valin staff felt quite comfortable and confident with the basic operation of the new system.

Lightbody points out, however, that because of the added functionality and depth of features in Prophet 21, the learning curve for more advanced functions and features will take some time. The trade-off though, is more flexibility and greater capability.

Smoothing the Learning Curve

To speed the learning process, Lightbody and his staff took advantage of training and implementation consulting offered through Activant Professional Services. Lightbody equates the Activant implementation training process to driving in a simulator: "The mistakes made there are never fatal, but a lot can be learned." The real test, of course, occurs after transitioning from simulation to 'live' operations. Based on Valin employees' initial experience using Prophet 21 as part of their daily operations, they learned quite a bit.

To dig even deeper into the functionality of their enterprise software solution investment, Valin incorporated Activant Educational Services's Computer-based training (CBT) in their training program, and will explore Activant University's Web-based training (WBT) opportunities. Both CBTs and WBTs have the advantage of giving employees valuable knowledge without ever leaving their desks. CBTs are computer programs students can take at their own pace, while WBTs provide interactive classroom experience over the Internet.

Web-based support, though, is the Activant service Valin finds most valuable. "The information technology (IT) department uses it every day," reports Lightbody. "If they post a problem or a question on the Web site, it gets addressed almost immediately."

Connectivity to the Web

For several years, Valin has offered their customers the convenience of Web-based purchasing (www.ValinOnline.com), and has integrated Prophet 21 into the day-to-day functioning of their e-commerce site. Lightbody feels the Web site offers Valin the opportunity to promote additional products via their extensive on-line catalog. He points out that some customers buy only four or five products routinely, and may not be aware of other products available from Valin. The Web presents a unique opportunity to showcase additional items that may be of interest or even complementary to products already purchased on a regular cycle, offering increased profit opportunities for Valin and better service for customers.

A Long-lasting Partnership

When called upon by other distributors to advise them on Activant solutions and services, Lightbody doesn't hesitate to engage them in extended conversations, readily recommending Activant as a knowledgeable and capable enterprise solutions partner. With Valin's nearly 20 years of experience working with Activant's products, services, and people, that's a strong endorsement.

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

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