Success Stories

Activant Prophet 21 Helps Distributor Manage Exponential Growth and Booming Kitting and Assemblies Business

Even though he is president of Hughes-Peters, Inc., a $20 million electronic equipment and supplies wholesaler, Mike Okel makes his own copies, calls on customers, and occasionally runs to the warehouse to pick orders. "It's just what distributors have had to do," he says. "We've had to take the fat out of our operations to survive."

Activant Prophet 21, a Windows-based SQL Server solution for distributors, has helped Okel cut the fat by enabling him to maximize resources and increase productivity. According to Okel, Prophet 21 has helped him manage a 275 percent jump in revenue with only a 10 percent increase in headcount.

"Prophet 21 has given us the tools we need to generate more sales and gross profit dollars without correlating employee growth," Okel says. "Since it was built for distributors, its functionality helps us move product efficiently, whereas a lot of other packages are accounting-specific."

Cable and Connectors, Relays and Switches

In business since 1924, Okel and business partners Donna Hensley and Mike Smith purchased Hughes-Peters in 1999, implemented time-tested business strategies, and turned the struggling distributorship around. Today, the company continues to grow, selling manufacturers throughout the Midwest everything from cable and connectors to relays and switches.

Recently, Hughes-Peters began promoting its value-added services - and customers responded overwhelmingly. "About 40 percent of our business now comes from kits and assemblies. They only made up about 10 percent of our revenue when we took over," Okel reveals.

Prophet 21 provides all of the functionality Hughes-Peters needs to efficiently stock, track, and sell its assemblies, kits, and related purchase and production orders. This functionality offers employees the ability to bundle items commonly sold together, eliminating the need to re-enter the same set of SKUs over and over again.

"With Prophet 21, we don't have to re-enter three - or 300 - part numbers each time a customer calls to request a printed circuit board kit, and the guys putting the kit together in the back don't have to go to a file cabinet to see what they need to get together," Okel says.

Plus, since Hughes-Peters can store an unlimited number of bills of materials for kits and assemblies in the solution, the company can keep records of each customer's unique requests. "Prophet 21 keeps us organized and helps us improve customer service since we don't have to ask for this information over and over again," Okel says.

Before implementing the solution, eight people in Hughes-Peter's Value-Add department handled $1 million worth of business. Efficiencies gained through Prophet 21 have enabled 11 people to handle $9 million in the same type of revenue. "Before Prophet 21, we were tracking things through spreadsheets and keeping bills of materials in manila folders," Okel says. "Now, we can do everything online."

Across-the-Board Benefits

Prophet 21 has helped improve other areas of Hughes-Peters. For example, thanks to flexible, customizable inventory management tools, annual turns increased more than 30 percent. "We can generate reports that help us track movement - and in a lot of cases, non-movement - so we can make sure we buy the right items, and return stock to manufacturers before it gets too old," Okel says.

Customer service has improved, too. "We've grown sales, and we're expanding our customer base, so we obviously have the tools that help us serve customers in a timely, efficient manner, he says. "We can get them answers quickly, and go out there and win business."

Okel attributes his company's success to two things: his employees and Activant Prophet 21. "You can have the best people in the world, but if you don't give them the right tools, they won't be able to do their jobs," he says. "I'm a big results guy, and it's easy to see that Prophet 21 gives my people the tools they need to do their jobs to the best of their abilities."

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