Managing and balancing auto parts inventory among multiple locations is crucial to avoiding lost sales and obsolescence, and improving turns. Manually managing those inventory movements is not only time consuming, but can potentially lead to costly errors.
Wilson Auto Parts, a five-location distributor based in New Jersey is upgrading its existing Epicor Prism business management solution with Epicor’s Vision software to improve distribution and inventory management.
The company is a 20-year customer of Epicor. Although it had digitized a number of its processes, there was still a significant amount of manual labor involved in turning the sales and inventory data into actionable business intelligence. An audit of the company’s daily operations found multiple areas that needed improvement. Team members were spending too much time engaged in manual processes that didn’t generate any revenue.
“We’ve been in business for more than 40 years, and we do a lot of things the ‘old school’ way,” says Nuno Barroso, general manager at Wilson Auto Parts. “Prism was our first and so far our only business system. We outsource parts from vendors, and it takes a lot of time to manage purchase orders and run reports. The reports have to be custom made and the existing system had some limitations there.”
Barroso investigated a number of different software products, but ultimately decided to upgrade the Epicor solution because of the company’s experience and the new features that were available.
“We’ve been with Epicor a long time, so I know that the support is there,” he says. “Vision has really good inventory management and reporting features. We scan parts in and out of our warehouse, and Vision does a good job with managing and shifting inventory compared to other systems.”
Once the new solution is in place, the company said it will be able to eliminate hours of manual processes involved in generating purchase orders, running reports, or dealing with invoices and statements. The software also will automate inventory balancing between locations, which will not only save time, but should also improve sales and increase inventory turns.
Manual efforts bog down operations
Currently, Barroso converts the Microsoft Word-based inventory reports he can get from Prism into an Excel spreadsheet report, which can take hours to complete.
“We have five warehouses, so there is a lot of overstock,” Barroso says. “The only way to manage that currently is by hand. When we do stock or replenishment orders, we have to manually review each order by location, and take the excess inventory and ship that to the location that needs it. Then you have to log into the physical location in the system and bill the store where you are allocating the excess inventory.”
The current system also posed challenges when dealing with cash customers. The existing software would log those customers as if the cash had been received once the order was sent out for delivery, but in some cases – if a part was wrong or not delivered – that was not the case. The system also couldn’t track core returns.
“It assumes the money was received, so we can’t really close to the day based on what’s in the system,” Barroso says. “With Vision, we can leave the ticket open until the driver comes back to enter the amount the customer paid.”
Generating automatic reports, though, is where Barroso thinks the real value will lie. Not only will this save time for managers, but it will also provide more accurate business insights. “I want to know who is buying and not buying,” he says. “Right now I have to print out information from accounts receivable and then highlight and review the balances. I can see what I need to see, but it takes two hours to do it.”
Barroso will be able to program the Vision system to generate automatic reports showing how much each customer has spent each week compared to previous weeks, whether customers asked for an increase in their credit limit, and other business indicators. “We have to keep track of so many things it’s easy to overlook something,” Barroso says. “Just walking in in the morning and knowing I’ll have an accurate report there is very important.”
Electronic communication will also accelerate inventory and shipping reconciliation with vendors. “Right now they send us a slip and we match what was received versus what was invoiced,” Barroso says. “If there’s a shortage I have to call or e-mail the vendor. With Vision, we’ll get the packing slip electronically and any corrections will get done in the system. It will automatically generate the invoice.”
Wilson also plans to implement additional software products. Epicor Compass, a business analytics tool, should help the company make more informed buying decisions. Epicor WebDocs, an electronic document management solution, will also improve efficiency by reducing filing and paperwork.
Customers also will have online access to invoices and statements. Right now, Wilson saves all of its paperwork for seven years. “That creates a lot of work and requires a lot of space,” Barroso says. “In New Jersey, space is money and time is money. Everything is going to be online. A customer doesn’t’ need to call about an invoice or a credit. They log in and print whatever they want, so our secretaries can have time to do other things. It will be more time efficient and cheaper, because we won’t be paying for space or spend time disposing of documents.”
Barroso says the company will eventually upgrade its document scanners as well. Once those systems are up and running, Wilson Auto Parts plans to roll out other software modules, including Epicor’s mobile delivery tracking system. The initial Vision implementation should be completed at all Wilson locations by March 30, 2018.
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