WSEasy™ Success Story : Steel City Products
Steel City Products (SCP), a major distributor of automotive paints, cleansers and miscellaneous accessories, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, needed to automate their 20 member route sales force to increase productivity, reduce paperwork (and errors), and generate more income from outside sales. A former user of Telxon technology, SCP wanted more than an 'item number / quantity ordered' solution. With experienced data processing professionals on staff, SCP evaluated several products and finally settled on WSE's WSEasy™ package and the state of the art Intermec JANUS 2010 hand held computer system.
SCP had a relatively efficient backend system in place. Their data processing department had brought route management and reporting to the state of the art with customized, in-house software solutions and a new IBM AS/400 system. However, the missing components were the tools necessary to automate the route sales force.
At the time, route salesmen were working with an 11x17 inch data printout order book with SKU, category, description and pricing information for nearly 9,000 items. Despite the best efforts of the DP staff, it simply was not economically or logistically feasible to prepare and deliver updated order books to the route salesmen more often than once a month. After all, the sales force spanned the eastern half of the United States. In fact, they were fortunate even to get the updates out every 6 weeks. Consequently, outdated pricing and availability information not to mention the lack of new products being listed in a timely fashion hampered the ability of the route accountant to make his sales quotas. Moreover, the large order book was extremely cumbersome to use. But with so many items to choose from, it simply could not be made smaller without sacrificing valuable information. Orders had to be written by hand on site. Each item had to be found in the book, its price noted and the total cost (less applicable discount) calculated. Flexible customer discount policies were impossible to implement since this would have meant having an order book specific to each customer. Since each salesman typically handled 10 to 20 stores, this would have added up to literally 100's of pounds of paper! Finally, the order was phoned in (or in some cases faxed) back to the distribution facility where it was transcribed by a data entry clerk into the host AS/400 system.
In summary, the major problems were:
Working together closely with SCP, Wengert Software Engineering customized and enhanced its sales force automation application to meet the specific requirements of SCP. The system database was configured to represent the SCP data in its current form. This inherent flexibility of WSEasy™ allows the solution to fit the customer requirements like a good pair of shoes. WSEasy™ was enhanced with the DeciMax database technology so that all 9,000 items and all specific customer information could be nicely fit on a single 2 Mbyte Static RAM PCMCIA card in the JANUS. In fact, the specialized database barely consumes 50% of the available space, allowing for future growth if need be. Even the order entry, item pick lists, and electronic messaging features were customized for SCP. Because bar-codes were not available at all customer sites, route accountants would need to find items in the 9,000 product master file quickly. Using extensive sorting and search features, WSE made it possible to find any item within a few seconds. And when bar-codes are available, it can simply be scanned at which time all of the pertinent information for the item is displayed. With the press of a single key, the user can even view the complete sales history for the given item for the last 2 years. This allows him to make intelligent decisions when restocking to allow for such things as holiday sales periods and seasonal type items. All of the customized requirements were jointly developed in a series of meetings involving SCP personnel from corporate management, data processing, and of course the route sales force itself. The result...a system which met all the customer's needs and which was accepted by the users themselves, very few of which had any experience with computers. Moreover, the initial prototype was delivered 2 weeks after the final requirements review and the finished product was operational in less than 2 months after the initial sales meeting!
Currently, SCP has been using WSEasy™ for over a year with fantastic results. Orders are now built electronically, sent via MODEM back to the distribution facility minutes after they are built, and automatically uploaded to the host AS/400 every half hour. Many orders are filled and/or shipped the same day. Data entry clerks are no longer required and fewer items are returned since order accuracy has increased dramatically. Customer satisfaction is higher because orders are right the first time, and stock out conditions are non-existent since the salesmen can now visit more frequently because they are able to generate orders in a fraction of the time previously required.
Route accountants are updated daily with new items, pricing changes, promotions, and even route changes. Electronic messaging allows route accountants to be notified of special events, meetings, bonus promotions, etc. every time they send in an order. Finally, the route sales force has been reduced thus increasing sales with fewer personnel.
Wengert Software Engineering, Inc. continues to enhance and upgrade the WSEasy™ product. Recently, Intermec made their version 3.0 firmware available for the JANUS 2010. Within days, WSEasy™ was enhanced to take advantage of the new power management functions. SCP was notified and the new release was on their door within a few days after final testing. WSE's liberal upgrade policy makes such new enhancements available at very little cost to the customer.
WSE has released a new 32 bit version (for Windows NT/95) of the WSEasy™Host application, which is the mission control component of the WSEasy™ system allowing for centralized control and processing of orders from hundreds of route accountants. WSEasyHost™ uses widely popular SQL compliant relational database technology, making it an extremely flexible, open architecture system guaranteed to fit the needs of any data processing department.
Wengert Software Engineering, Inc.
P.O. Box 14583
Pittsburgh, PA 15234 U.S.A.
Phone: (412) 343-3506
Fax: (412) 291-1799