News

H.J. Oldenkamp Company Decreases Costs and Increases Customers Service

Source: MSI Mid-Day Report, 11/20/2002

Less than a year after going live on Prophet 21 CommerceCenter, Jeff Jensen, operations manager at H.J. Oldenkamp Company, noticed a surprising - and substantial - decrease in what his company spent on paper and related paperwork.

"There are costs associated with every piece of paper a company generates," he says. "With CommerceCenter, we eliminated many of those costs because we now keep most of our information online."

Prophet 21 CommerceCenter is an enterprise software solution that uses a Windows platform and SQL Server. Highly scalable, CommerceCenter provides distributors with a powerful, customizable application that helps increase sales, improve customer service, and reduce operating costs.

Features include order and inventory management, purchasing, pricing and promotion, supply chain optimization, financial management, customer relationship management, business reporting and analysis, e-business, and warehouse automation.

"Prophet 21 is thrilled that H.J. Oldenkamp has seen such a substantial return on their investment in CommerceCenter," says Chuck Boyle, Prophet 21 president and CEO. "As they go forward, we're certain they will continue to see improved efficiencies and drive dollars to their bottom line."

The CommerceCenter Advantage

H.J. Oldenkamp, a distributor of specialty building products - and Michigan's sole distributor of DuPont Corian - moved to Prophet 21 CommerceCenter after more than a decade of existing on software that didn't suit the company.

"It was never a fully-designed system," Jensen says. "There was no general ledger functionality; you could take orders, pay bills, and that was about the extent of it." He adds that keeping track of inventory was unreliable, and, at best, "iffy."

Since moving to CommerceCenter, H.J. Oldenkamp employees enjoy the fact that they can trust the numbers and figures that CommerceCenter provides.

"We have so many capabilities now. Before, we could not look up critical information in a timely manner. For example, to verify commitment of a product to fill a customer order, we would have to wait for the system to search back through every order and report, which typically took several minutes," Jensen says. "Now, it's a button-click away. We can make a decision with the information without delaying the order transaction or the customer."

Order processing at the company has also become much more efficient, he says. "The value this has provided our customer service department is key," Jensen charges. "CommerceCenter gives our customer service representatives the information they need, right at their fingertips."

Customer Service representatives have also been able to help customers in a shorter time than ever before, Jensen says. "We're still getting the same product to them at the same price; we're just able to process their information quicker and more efficiently," he says. Have customers noticed? "They certainly notice that the paperwork is a lot easier to understand, and that there's less of it," he says.

Better Communications

Most improved is inter-company communications, contends Jensen. "The ability to share information between departments, to know that an order has been placed, billed, and shipped - without having to chase it down - has saved us time and money," he says. "The accounting people no longer have to run around the office, asking each other what bill has been paid and what bill hasn't. The information is all right on the screen."

Ultimately, CommerceCenter will provide H.J. Oldenkamp the tools it needs for growth. Jensen contends that cutting staff was never an intention when the company invested in the solution. Instead, he says, if the solution creates less work for one department: "There's always somewhere else that person could be reassigned to - like the sales department."

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