Kelly-Fradet Lumber is a pro dealer serving professional contractors across Connecticut and Massachusetts. A key part of their business is custom items, many of which have hundreds of configurable options. One of Kelly-Fradet’s biggest challenges lay in serving customers who want an exact copy of custom items ordered months or years ago. With so many configurable parts, customers rarely remember the exact specs of the original piece. To further complicate the matter, Kelly-Fradet’s customers frequently do business at different branches. They may have placed the original order at one branch, but then reorder it at a different location.

Kelly-Fradet wanted to provide even better service to their multi-location customers, so they decided to implement the Agility ERP system from DMSi. “We made the move to DMSi several years ago after experiencing serious growing pains with our previous software,” says Dan Sullivan, Kelly-Fradet’s general manager.

Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, RJ Schinner has been in business for over 50 years and has 8 locations across the Midwest, from the Dakotas to Texas. RJ Schinner operates as a redistribution specialist, or as Jerry Boughner, RJ Schinner’s CIO puts it, a ‘wholesaler to wholesalers’. Their business model consists of purchasing food service, paper, janitor/sanitation, and grocery supplies from over 200 manufacturers and repacking them on pallets for customers who are unable to buy full or half truckloads. This allows RJ Schinner’s customers to mix and match their order, while still taking advantage of the favorable pricing terms offered to a large purchaser.

In searching for a new B.I. and reporting solution, two companies kept coming up -- and MITS was one of them. Jerry remembers. “It really came down to my decision, and I wanted something that was native to our system -- and with MITS being an official Epicor business partner whose product actually worked on the server as opposed to having to export all the data outside of our company and then have it come back, was a big factor in my decision to go with them,” Jerry said. “Plus I have an ever-expanding sales force and I didn’t want to have the cost and trouble of continually going out and getting licenses for them. I liked the MITS system and how it showed to the sales reps -- it was much easier for them to use.”

This FREE webinar on May 22, 2 p.m. EST sponsored by Epicor will explain what you should consider before moving your data to the cloud.

While ERP software in the cloud has been around for more than a decade, adoption rates are increasing for distributors. This is largely driven by the need to provide exceptional customer service to remain competitive. This webinar will discuss the changing landscape and suggest things you should think about before moving to the cloud.

Artificial Intelligence applications are raising the bar for business.

On March 16, 2019 at NFDA/MWFA/Pac-West Joint Conference in San Diego CA, Jeff from Brown Smith Wallace Advisory Services will present an overview of basic AI concepts, take a deeper dive into AI for salesforce automation and AI for Business Analytics and propose a plan for tackling a pilot AI project.