"Our customers have no patience," says Tracey Gregory, Insul-Serve's CFO and Vice President of Finance. "They are mostly contractors and subcontractors who are working against tight deadlines and often don't contact us until a day or two before they need the materials onsite. Timely delivery to these clients is mandatory. As a result, when the economy was down, we concentrated on staying competitive through improved customer service, and not by lowering our prices."
Cleaning up data and reducing inventory
To support its customer service-focused strategy, Insul-Serve Management reached out to Epicor in 2010 regarding the benefits of the latter's enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. For the previous 20 years, Insul-Serve had used six separate systems, which didn't "talk" with one another-making it extremely difficult to track materials, supplies, and deliveries across all company locations. Among the many problems encountered by Insul-Serve staff on a daily basis was the ongoing duplication of purchase orders and encoding of multiple product codes for a single part.
Gregory and other Insul-Serve executives were immediately impressed with "the ease of moving around the Epicor ERP solution" and the prospect of "cleaning up the database" through a demonstration that included the tracking of existing Selle and PBI Supply inventory.
After going online in April 2011, the Epicor ERP system is now being used companywide, from sales and warehousing staff to accountants and office managers. "The savings have been tremendous," explains Gregory. "Through the enhanced ability to cross-reference our materials with order histories, we were able to reduce our inventory by 10 percent within the first six months of implementation. This has allowed us to pre-order 40 percent of our raw material and negotiate lower prices with vendors, resulting in significant cost savings and discounts."
Improving reporting efficiency and accuracy
According to Stefanie Rankin, Controller at Insul-Serve for the past eight years, the Epicor ERP system has also improved productivity by cutting reporting times in half. "The solution provided a new culture for doing things right," offers Rankin. "It used to take us twice the time to do the same amount of work. Year-end financials would take nearly three months since we had to go through everyone's paperwork. The same effort can now be done in weeks, given that it takes just seconds to drill down through a job or account history.
"Plus, Epicor ERP has eliminated 99.9 percent of the human errors we used to find with the old system. Before, there were always gaping holes in our information. Our customer service representatives are now accountable for everything they enter. In addition, Epicor ERP has greatly increased the accuracy of our databases by being so easy to use. It simply does what we tell it to do."
Planning and support for the future
Insul-Serve Management plans to upgrade the Epicor ERP system in the near future, with the goal of going paperless at each of its warehouses and creating a SQL platform that will facilitate eCommerce. "Epicor's service is second to none," adds Gregory. "They have been with us every step of the way. They speak in terms that make everything understandable, and never fail to escalate calls when we ask the tough questions, or follow up to make sure all our needs are met."