Success Stories

Anyone who eats out in a fine restaurant these days knows that simple is in and fussy is out. And any restaurant owner worth his or her salt knows that appearance and presentation matter.

It should then come as no surprise that when The Paper Company (TPC) went shopping for a new enterprise solution, the first two items on its menu of requirements were: It had to present information simply. And it had to make TPC look good on paper.

Activant Stanpak, which the Irvine, CA-based distributor of disposable supplies for the foodservice trade installed in 2004, could do neither, as they discovered after switching to it from D2K because, as Office Manager Julie Scheibe put it, “They knew more about our industry than D2K did.”

From A Face in the Crowd to One of a Kind

By adopting Stanpak, TPC joined an exclusive club consisting of every other paper distributor in Southern California. This, said President Mike Madden, soon became a problem.

“Everything we sent out looked like everything everyone else sent out,” he said. “When we sent out invoices or price quotes, they looked like the ones everyone else sent- and the ones everyone else sent didn’t look good at all: they all had the same tiny print, the same cluttered formatting, the same plain old block lettering. They all even use the same wording. You couldn’t even put your logo on your documents.”

“We didn’t want to look like everyone else,” said Scheibe. “We felt constrained with Stanpak.”

So The Paper Company decided it was time to break free and stand out from the crowd. It did so by switching to Activant Prophet 21.

“Now, when we send out invoices, we have our logo on them - the same logo that appears on our building, our trucks, and our Web site,” Madden said. “Now people recognize us when they get quotes and invoices from us.”

If the Customers Understand Them, They Will Pay the Bills On Time

They can also understand them better. “With Stanpak, everything was small and hard to read,” Madden continued. “We took all that information in Prophet 21 and made our own forms with the Forms Design package. We now have the simplest invoice in the world. Many of our customers have called to compliment us on our new invoices.”

These changes are more than cosmetic, he noted: “When customers can see clearly that they ordered this much of a certain product on the invoice, they pay it. When it’s all cluttered and hard to read, they question the bill, and then you have to wait to get paid.”

The same elegant simplicity helps The Paper Company’s employees do their jobs better. “Most of the reports that Stanpak had developed for the salespeople had so much information packed so tightly that no one would read them,” Madden said. “Now, it’s totally different - our salesmen can get their reports and immediately see how they’re doing and what they need to meet their goals.”

And now that they know how well they’re doing, they can give feedback to help the company support them better. “Now our sales reps bring us great ideas to improve processes and make our business run better,” said Scheibe.

Not Just A Pretty Face

The Paper Company is now able to shine on paper because Prophet 21 is more than just a pretty face: Its inner beauty lies in its ability to provide everyone in the company with accurate, up-to-the-second information about what is going on.

“We like the fact that all the data reflects what’s happening right now,” said Scheibe. “We know our cash on hand right now. When our sales reps log in to place an order, they know what’s in inventory right now. We know how our sales are measuring up right now.”

And in an industry where customers need things right now, this gives TPC a competitive advantage. “Foodservice providers can’t run out of supplies,” Madden said. “When a customer places an order on Monday, it has to be delivered on Tuesday.”

Because Prophet 21’s inventory management controls are more precise, TPC can make sure that happens. “In Stanpak, you could sell something you didn’t have on hand,” Scheibe said. “In Prophet 21, you can’t. It forces you to think differently, and it forces your inventory to be more accurate. That’s a big plus for us.” TPC is taking advantage of the discipline Prophet 21 imposes to revamp its warehouse operations to make them more efficient.

No More Flip-Flopping

Madden can also get everything he needs to know about the products he sells far more easily with Prophet 21. “When I was in Stanpak, I was flip-flopping back and forth through two, three, four, five screens every day,” he said. “Now, I only look at one screen all day long. The Item Master Inquiry screen tells me everything I want to know about the item - its order history, purchasing patterns, sales, inventory - all I have to do is drill down. And that’s a big-time convenience.”

As TPC has been on Prophet 21 for only four months, Madden and Scheibe both admit they have much still to learn about its power and functionality. They recommend that Stanpak users take advantage of the process development consulting Activant offers to rethink the way they do business, for Prophet 21 will transform it radically for the better. “They will sit down with your purchasing people, for instance, and show them modules they can use, and boom! They do their jobs better,” Madden said. “Let’s face it - people aren’t going to read the manuals.”

In the long run, TPC anticipates that the performance improvements they will realize from using Prophet 21 will more than justify the investment they have made in the software and the people that help them get more out of it. “I anticipate that our gross margins should improve by two to three percent by the end of the year, which is good in our business,” Madden said.

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