A diverse business needs a robust system
Englund Marine is a diverse business-including retail stores, wholesale distribution warehouses, several call centers and a fabrication shop-and required a robust business management system to streamline operations and provide up-to-date technology. "We needed a system that could handle the diversity of our wholesale business, distribution site, and all our retail locations without issue," said Theresa Turner, general manager of Englund Marine and Industrial Supply. "One of the challenges we had to overcome was eliminating handwritten invoices in our retail locations. Before implementing the Epicor Eagle solution, we'd sell a product, write it down, and charge the account by sending the customer a paper invoice. Everything was very manual and out-of-date for that time."
"With the Epicor Compass solution, it is much easier to maintain data integrity, and our inventory value was reduced by 10% in only one year of using Eagle," said Turner."
In addition to basic operational requirements, Englund Marine's primary need was the functionality of a ready-made integration for an eCommerce website. "We wanted a solution that could extend our business into the online world, both for wholesale and retail," said Turner. "We carry 70,000 items, so a robust system was important to us. We selected the Epicor Eagle solution because it had the capability of integrating an eCommerce website, provided the greatest percentage of specifications that we required, and the staff was accommodating and easy to work with."
One system for all locations
With a broad variety of operations, Englund Marine has benefitted from the Eagle system which easily consolidates data across all locations. "One of the aspects about Epicor Eagle that we like the most is the fact that we have been able to put all of our businesses on one system, even the wholesale locations," said Turner. "We can freely share and source inventory across all locations. That was really one of the biggest features we knew we would greatly value, and we have one hundredfold. We don't need to worry about getting numerous systems to work together-this saves me time and our business significant money."
"For us the real difference is that Eagle has removed any mystery from our business," said Turner. "We now have meaningful, easily accessible data to analyze across all of our locations and the transition from paper to a robust computer system has allowed us to greatly progress. We are now at the point where we can analyze margin, inventory turns, assortments, and more, and turn it into actionable information to improve our business. Because of our transition from handwritten invoices and purchase orders to innovative technology, if there's a day that reporting doesn't go out to the management team, our 76-year-old owner is knocking on the door asking, 'What's going on? I didn't get my reports today?' We definitely rely on the data obtained from the Eagle solution."
The eCommerce solution to drive the business forward
Online there is a multitude of retail competition. Englund Marine was aware that the majority of national retailers that sell marine accessories had a strong eCommerce presence. "We have online competition on both the wholesale and retail sides of our business," said Turner. "We implemented Epicor iNet eBusiness Suite beginning with the wholesale side of our business, and our wholesale customers are very happy with our website. One customer recently told me that he gave our company $56,000 of new business because we had a good website and that he loved using it. Now, that is the kind of feedback we want to hear. Epicor has helped us provide a website that is meaningful for our customers. In the first 11 months of website operation, we took in more than 14,500 orders through the website-proving, in fact, that customers do love using it and that our web business is continuing to grow. ECommerce has allowed us to maintain our competitive edge, and the best news is that we still have great opportunity to grow and develop that part of our business in the future."
"Our next project is taking our 70,000+ retail items and, with the help of iNet, make them available on an eCommerce website for retail customers," said Turner. "This will not be an easy task, but we know that with Epicor we'll get there. The beauty of the integration between Epicor iNet and the Epicor Eagle solution is that it is indeed fully integrated-we won't have to duplicate our data entry because all of the data is housed within Eagle and translated over to iNet. Building an eCommerce site is like building a brand new location, you need to be able to carry the inventory and provide the products at a rate pleasing to your customers. It takes time to find the balance, but when you do and see happy customers, you know all the hard work was worth it."
Outservicing competition and streamlining special orders
Englund Marine is a business that is very heavy on special orders- both on the wholesale and the retail sides of the business. The company's wholesale competitors are located both in the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. "On the wholesale side, we have regional and national distributors that we compete against that are selling similar products. Because of our new eCommerce business, we are now more effectively competing with them," said Turner. "In our retail business, all of our stores are strategically located in small towns where commercial fishing is a primary industry. And because of that, the competition in those towns is minimal to nonexistent. Because all of our locations are now operating on one system with Eagle, we can easily source products for our customers even if it is located in another store."
"Furthermore, Eagle has greatly enhanced our ability to service our customer's special orders. Before we implemented the Eagle solution, we would have to handwrite special orders or manually key them into our old system, they were completely separate operations -point of sale (POS) and purchasing weren't tied together-and, it was much more difficult and time consuming to enter those orders," said Turner. "Eagle has really streamlined our special order process. The fact that we can easily source products for our customers from another location right in the customer's order at the POS is very powerful in itself. But also, the fact that staff doesn't have to leave a terminal to find out if another location has a specific product is game changing and so simple, and the beauty of it is that it's all tied together. Our customers and staff really appreciate the streamlined process."
Savings across the business
Pricing is one of the most important strategies a business undertakes, but without careful analysis, inaccurate prices can turn a business upside down. Englund Marine uses Epicor Eagle pricing features to carefully manage and take the guesswork out of pricing. "Because of the streamlined pricing functionality in Eagle, we went down from two people to one person in our pricing department," said Turner. "All of our pricing is now easily managed within the system. It now takes the pricing manager only five minutes to enter 100 line items-it used to take four hours. The result for us is a stronger bottom line and more time to focus on our customers."
Englund Marine has also improved information visibility and reduced debt with Epicor Compass, a robust reporting module within Eagle. "Accounts receivable reporting within Epicor Compass solution has allowed us to substantially reduce our bad debt," said Turner. "It provides meaningful data which greatly improves our ability to analyze various aspects of our business, like inventory. Compass solution has enabled us to better manage our inventory assortment to meet customer needs. The system's process for counting inventory gives us more accurate inventory and the data import tool helps us quickly import new items, as well as effortlessly update current data in the system. With the Epicor Compass solution, it is much easier to maintain data integrity, and our inventory value was reduced by 10% in only one year of using Eagle."
A partnership that helps business grow
"We began our business partnership with Epicor in the best way possible-with an educated team," said Turner. "Epicor provided us with a very detailed, professional salesperson during our research period. Once our needs were identified by the salesperson, we were handed over to a very competent implementation team that helped us roll out the new system to our entire company. The partnership has stayed strong and we can reach out to Epicor at all levels of the organization for assistance and advice. We've grown exponentially since we got the system, and the system has driven that change. What I want cannot always be accomplished, but I always feel like the Epicor team cares about what we need."