Harnessing Flexible, Powerful ERP to Enhance Customer Experience and Speed Data-Driven Business Growth
Since Benjamin Franklin’s legendary experiments, reliable, accessible electricity has become essential to everyday life. From round-the-clock lighting to heating and cooling to ensuring our digital connections, electricity powers our world. For close to 80 years, Hein Electric Supply has been helping to keep the lights—and everything else—on across Wisconsin. But when an unreliable, inflexible ERP system began to impede progress, Hein Electric Supply knew it was time for a change. Built for wholesale distributors, Epicor Eclipse answered the call with a robust, scalable, flexible, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution.
Southeastern Wisconsin’s largest independent electrical distributor, award-winning Hein Electric Supply offers commercial and residential contractors quality products and top-notch service. Chris Stoming, President at Hein Electric Supply shared the Hein mantra: “It all comes down to the customer experience. Are we creating something that is making it better?”
He continued, “Oddly, the market is growing while also consolidating. To stay autonomous, relevant and competitive, we need to be nimble. We had another ERP provider that actually slowed down our processes, created instability and incurred extra costs.”
Hein Electric Supply is a member of Affiliated Distributors, many of whom were using Epicor Eclipse. Stoming’s team spent three days with one of those distributors to see the product in action, emphasizing, “This experience gave us tremendous insight into the strength and power of Epicor Eclipse and what we had been missing.”
The final requirement was the ability to meet a very aggressive timeline. The new solution had to be live in roughly six months before the previous ERP system contract expired.
The on-time go-live was just the first goal, closely followed by other significant milestones. “One of the biggest pain points with our old system was how difficult it was to look up a product. The entry had to be very precise,” explained Matt Los, Controller at Hein Electric Supply. This was a deceptively small problem with cascading ramifications: delayed product for customers, frustrated employees, and it demanded a lot of knowledge to effectively use the software. Los imparted, “We like to promote within, and it was challenging to move people around because the system was so hard to use.”
Stoming added, “Our business is geared towards contractors who want to quickly get back to the job site. In addition to poor searchability, it took too long to print pick tickets or invoices; these basic tasks are critical to our business. Technology should accelerate, not slow down, processes. Epicor Eclipse gets our customers in and out much faster.”
Beyond the seamless implementation, a major benefit has been responsive support. “EpicCare is a dream,” Los said. “Before, we required support because the system wasn't functioning correctly. We would raise a ticket, but it went into a black hole, so we needed to pay a third party for service. Now, if we do have a ticket, it’s typically resolved within a few hours and we can also access case history so if an issue reoccurs, we can fix it quickly.”
Epicor Eclipse gave Hein Electric Supply the ability to see the entire customer profile, from order and delivery through to AR status. Los stated, “It enables us to not only act with customers in a more informed way but empowers our team to get accurate information to customers much more quickly.”
Epicor has been a game changer for us. Growth would have been difficult, and we would have required a lot more people and costly outside resources. With Epicor, we are ready for the next 15 years of our business.
The added benefit is that employees gain a fuller perspective of the business. “It’s easy to get siloed into your own area,” Los mentioned. “Epicor helps people understand what's going on. Sales can see that there is an outstanding invoice, or the warehouse can flag a shipment that hasn’t been made.”
Furthermore, Epicor enables reports for improved decision-making and allows Hein Electric Supply to track the impact of those decisions.
EpicCare is a dream. Before, we required support because the system wasn't functioning correctly. We would raise a ticket, but it went into a black hole, so we needed to pay a third party for service. Now, if we do have a ticket, it’s typically resolved within a few hours, and we can also access case history so that if an issue reoccurs, we can fix it quickly.
For example, management can log sales counter traffic by the hour, ensuring the right number of employees always staff the counter.
Over the past five years, Hein Electric Supply has grown an average of 10% to 15% per annum. Early on, the company added headcount to keep pace. Since deploying Epicor Eclipse, new efficiencies allowed the business to sustain growth with fewer staff. Los explained, “We’ve lost a few employees to attrition: In accounting, we have not replaced one position, which is important in a non-revenue-creating department. Another employee will soon retire, and we won’t fill that role either. We continue to grow while improving service levels because Epicor does so much and does it more efficiently.”
Another significant boost has been in project management. “Epicor Eclipse tools such as job management and direct-through-stock have made project managers more productive and their day-to-day jobs are easier,” Stoming remarked.
He added, “The level of productivity and the line of sight to key deliverables is huge. Overall, we’ve seen at least a 15% to 20% spike in productivity.”
Hein Electric Supply has taken advantage of that increase to reposition resources. As an example, AR is no longer a 40-hour-a-week job, so that employee assists sales with shipping schedules and supports the warehouse with product location. Los pinpointed, “These are not normal jobs for someone in accounting, but Epicor opens opportunities to match skillsets to other areas and improve the customer experience.”
“People have been very flexible and willing to learn because the Epicor system doesn't scare them. Additionally, people have broadened their knowledge base and experience, evolving them to better employees. Two years ago, we never would have dreamed of this possibility.”
“In December 2022, our goal was to go live,” said Stoming. “Based on past experience, we prepared for the worst and set up a daily triage meeting to review issues. We never needed that meeting.”
The fast and easy adoption helped to enable the company to tackle other vital projects much sooner than anticipated. Stoming recalled, “Performance was so improved that we quickly moved to other companion projects such as Delivery, Route and Stockroom. It helped that our IT associate was no longer consumed with putting out fires with our previous system.”
We went from an antiquated site to a real-time e-commerce site . . . in less than four months. That’s unheard of—these are usually two-year projects. Epicor accelerates our efforts, making it easy to activate additional functionality without the need for extra resources, and lets us stay focused on improving and growing the business.
Epicor’s capabilities also helped enable the company to quickly and easily onboard more than 30 EDI suppliers to date. Los explained, “Even though EDI was completely foreign to our employees, it was easy to deploy because Epicor does all the work. Instead of spending two minutes per PO or invoice, you just need a few seconds to verify the information. This makes us more efficient with our suppliers and makes them more profitable.”
Another important initiative was the Hein Electric Supply ecommerce website. The product searchability challenges of the previous ERP translated to the site, making it difficult for customers to use. The new site utilizes Epicor Eclipse searchability. Los cited, “Our ecommerce lead highlighted that customers can now use the colloquial ‘pizza box’ term for a part and, even though it’s not the technical name, the product pops up. A lot of jaws dropped.”
“We went from an antiquated site to a real-time ecommerce site that is an extension of Epicor Eclipse in less than four months,” commented Stoming. “That’s unheard of—these are usually two-year projects. Epicor accelerates our efforts, making it easy to activate additional functionality without the need for extra resources, and lets us stay focused on improving and growing the business.”
Los summarized, “Epicor has been a game changer for us. Growth would have been difficult, and we would have required a lot more people and costly outside resources. With Epicor, we are ready for the next 15 years of our business.”
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Epicor Eclipse
