Success Stories

Activant Application Consultant Helps Distributor Recognize Which Functionality Best Suits His Business

Jim Woessner invested in an Activant solution because its distribution-centric functionalities suit his business needs. But he admits that identifying which features will best streamline Dayton Supply and Tool Company's unique processes can be difficult. "Sometimes you read the manual or the new features guide and everything doesn't sink in," Woessner says. "You don't get a full understanding of what will help and what won't."

To help identify which features will best help his Ohio-based company, Woessner often invites an Activant Application Consultant on site to examine processes, answer questions, and make suggestions.

Activant Application Consultants help distributors learn more about how to operate their solutions. But, that's just a small part of what they do. They also have years of real-world industry experience, and can offer new and tenured employees insight into better business processes and practices.

"Activant consultants walk us through everything and show us what's relevant to our business and what's not," Woessner says. "Better yet, they tell us how and why we should make changes, which really helps us absorb their advice. Everyone learns better when someone takes them through something step by step."

Improving Processes, Boosting the Bottom Line

During a recent engagement, an Activant Application Consultant recognized that Dayton Supply employees were not utilizing their enterprise software solution and accompanying complementary products to their fullest potential. He saw that the company's accounting department could significantly reduce the time and money it spent on customer communications by faxing and e-mailing financial documents instead of mailing them.

The consultant showed employees how to perform the task automatically through their solution -- and, in a few easy steps, accounting staffers were sending invoices, credit hold notifications, and dunning letters at the click of a button.

Woessner estimates that he will save at least $8,000 in stationery and postage costs this year alone -- and much more in soft labor costs, because his accounting department no longer stuffs and sends letters through the postage machine. "I'm saving about 41 cents for each letter we don't send, and we once sent thousands upon thousands of these letters each year," he charges. "The consultant paid for his visit several times over with that suggestion alone."

Time Savings

The consultant also recognized that Dayton Supply could use its solution's powerful Import/Export functionality to save dozens of hours of labor. Prior to utilizing Import/Export capabilities, employees manually re-keyed bin locations and price, customer, and product lists. Using the Import/Export shortcut, employees transfer this data from other electronic sources in seconds.

Woessner also realized a huge time savings during a recent branch consolidation, when he spent only an hour transferring inventory data. "I thought it would take at least four times that long," he says.

Also, thanks to a lesson in the solution's cycle count capabilities, Woessner cut the time he spends on annual inventory counts by 50 percent. "We've only moved to Activant in the last few years, and we were so used to doing things a certain way that we were reluctant to leave them behind," he says. "The consultant showed us how to use Activant to get things like annual inventory done more easily, and it's really worked out for us.

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