Success Stories

Activant Knowledge Management Center for Prophet 21 Helps Executives Make Quick Decisions

Having instant access to up-to-date information is vital to managing a successful business, contends P.J. Glauber, COO of Glauber Equipment Corporation. "If you need to make a business decision and your data is one month old, and you don't know what's happened in those last 30 days, you're really taking a shot in the dark," he says.

So, with that in mind, Glauber and other executives at the family-owned and operated Lancaster, NY-based blower, compressor, and pump distributor invested in Knowledge Management Center to complement Activant Prophet 21, the company's enterprise software solution. "With Knowledge Management Center, I have easily accessible data that's as current as I determine," Glauber says. "If I need to make a quick decision, I have good hard numbers to work with."

Knowledge Management Center is specially designed for executives that want to access, analyze, manage, and respond to information in a timely manner. It quickly summarizes sales, inventory, accounts receivable, accounts payables and open orders, and gives top-level management the ability to set alerts that inform them when business activity falls outside of a predefined range. And, customizing screens and reports is as easy as dragging and dropping fields.

Prior to investing in Knowledge Management Center, Glauber Equipment executives used Crystal Reports to gather and analyze information. And though Glauber added that the reports were a good way to scrutinize very intricate data on certain aspects of business, he admits that they weren't easy to compose. "With the Knowledge Management Center the reports are intuitive and easy to generate. They can be developed and modified on the fly and I don't need to have an IT person involved," contends Glauber.

In the near future, Glauber says that he hopes to expand his utilization of Knowledge Management Center by using the executive information system to circulate data among sales personnel. "If I can create a view of data that somebody can just open in Excel, and in an instant, update it to the Knowledge Management Center server, that makes it even easier to get more information in front of the proper people without having to run a bunch of reports and then disseminate them by e-mail or snail-mail," he says.

A Solution that Works

Prophet 21, Glauber testifies, integrates all of Glauber Equipment's data streams into one concise, easy-to-use interface. And the benefits don't stop there. "Prophet 21 allows us to handle orders more efficiently, so we can process more orders with the same number of people," Glauber contends. The solution also allows Glauber Equipment to get their invoices out in a timelier manner. "We eliminated the lags we faced in our old batch invoicing system. Now, we present invoices the day of shipment to clients. Because we get bills out faster, our cash flow is better."

Prophet 21 is a huge step forward from the company's old, character-based system, Glauber says. With their new solution, salespeople can take quotes and automatically turn them into orders, something representatives couldn't do before. "If we couldn't give customers timely service, or if one of our competitors could service them more quickly, we'd lose them. With Prophet 21, we're now in a position where we can compete with anybody on a time-of-order to time-of-shipment basis." Glauber says that ability is increasingly important because of a shrinking customer base in the New York area. "Prophet 21 helps our bottom line, because it helps us retain our customers, as well as attract new business," Glauber concludes.

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