News

Boggis Johnson Cuts Order Entry Time Significantly

YARDLEY, PA, January 15, 2003 - Bill Johnson, executive vice president of Boggis Johnson Electric Co., a full line electrical distributor in Wisconsin, knows that in a competitive market, speed and customer service are often the key to winning - and keeping - the best customers. Fortunately, Prophet 21 CommerceCenter 9.5, a Windows-based enterprise software solution developed expressly for hard goods distributors, includes several new features that do just that.

Prophet 21 provides distributors with technology solutions that help them increase sales, improve customer service, and reduce operating costs. As Johnson can attest, CommerceCenter 9.5 continues that tradition. "CommerceCenter 9.5 is something distributors should move to as soon as possible," he said. "The features are incredibly time-saving. The enhancements are apparent everywhere, from order entry to purchasing, even to the back end - in administration. CommerceCenter 9.5 features will significantly impact our business - reducing costs and streamlining our processes."

Prophet 21 President and CEO, Chuck Boyle, expects other distributors to find similar advantages. "Every year, Prophet 21 invests millions of dollars into research and development of our products so our customers can benefit from the best technology available to meet their specific needs," he said. "Features in CommerceCenter 9.5 were developed at the request of our customers who where looking for new ways to simplify their processes for maximum benefit to their bottom line."

Palm Order Entry - A More Efficient Process

A family owned business since 1915, Boggis Johnson serves several markets, including commercial and industrial construction, industrial processors and manufacturers, large industrial original equipment manufacturers (OEM), and electrical utilities. One of the company's main goals is to ensure that customer orders are always filled quickly and accurately - a goal that is hard to attain when orders taken by remote salespeople are handwritten onto scratchpads and then faxed to the main office for entry.

That is why Boggis Johnson immediately upgraded to CommerceCenter 9.5, which features Palm Order Entry capabilities. Palm Order Entry enables remote salespeople to upload customer information from CommerceCenter to a personal digital assistant (PDA) before making a sales call, take the order on the PDA while with the customer, and download the orders from the PDA to CommerceCenter at the end of the day, thus eliminating rekeying errors and freeing inside staff to focus on developing new business.

"We wanted to automate and streamline the process as much as possible, to save time and eliminate errors," Johnson said of CommerceCenter 9.5's Palm Order Entry capabilities. "It's already saved us a lot of time - weekly order entry time for just one individual has already been cut by eight hours."

Johnson added that today's customers, especially those in the MRO market, expect orders to be taken electronically. "Palm Order Entry improves our customers' perception of us, and makes the whole process more professional."

Lot Billing - Streamlines the Billing Process

As a distributor to the OEM, construction, and industrial markets, Boggis Johnson must bill customers for groups of items in lots, rather than individually. "Before CommerceCenter 9.5, I had to do some manual tracking of who I billed for what," said Mary-Kay Savignac, operations manager at Boggis Johnson. "With CommerceCenter 9.5's Lot Billing capabilities, I don't have to do that any more. The process is incredibly smooth and the solution handles everything. I don't have to keep entering part or purchase order numbers. It's cut the amount of time I spend on Lot Billing by 60 percent."

Johnson concluded: "We moved to CommerceCenter because we wanted a system that would take us to the 21st century, and beyond and CommerceCenter has done this."

About Prophet 21 CommerceCenter 9.5

Prophet 21 CommerceCenter offers distributors features and functionality designed to increase sales, decrease operational costs, and improve customer service. Using a Windows platform and SQL server, CommerceCenter 9.5 includes:

• Enhanced notes capabilities: Advanced note functionality provides the ability to place internal or external notes on invoices, cash receipts, and other business documents, for enhanced communication between departments, customers, and suppliers.
• Enhanced substitutions at order entry: Provides the ability to automatically substitute items during order entry if they are marked as "interchangeable" substitutes, including working down a substitution chain, improving customer service and increasing sales.
• Improved fast edits: Find and replace capabilities streamline the process of making mass edits to records. Not only will this save time, but it will also streamline processes by ensuring you have accurate data.
• Ability to e-mail forms from within CommerceCenter: Gain flexibility in how you deliver common forms such as invoices, order acknowledgements, transfers, and purchase orders with a feature designed to provide you with the ability to e-mail documents from within CommerceCenter, reducing the cost of mailing and faxing forms and the time it takes to get documents to customers and suppliers.
• Plus more than 40 features...

CommerceCenter 9.5, like all Prophet 21 solutions, is backed by a host of professional services designed to help customers maximize their return on investment.

Pricing and Availability

Prophet 21 CommerceCenter is now available. For more information and pricing, please visit www.p21.com or call 1-800-776-7438. Prophet 21 customers may contact their Inside Sales Representative directly.

Press Contact Kimberly Meiser Activant Solutions, Inc. 215-493-8900, ext. 3170 kim.meiser@activant.com

About Activant / Legal & Trademark Information

###

---

Prospective customers are encouraged to fill out and submit the convenient Activant Web Contact Form.

Back to Top