Success Stories

With a one-for-all management philosophy, the Winkler brothers know a few things about coordinating hectic schedules and negotiating conflicting ideas.

John, Mark, and Robert Winkler serve as CEO, CFO, and CTO respectively, in the Office of the President at J.W. Winco, Inc. a Wisconsin-based standard hand operating machine components and assembly hardware wholesaler. And while the brothers admit that sibling rivalry occasionally enters the workplace, cooperating to better their business keeps them focused on maintaining accord.

"We butt heads now and then, but what family in business together doesn't?" laughs John. "But knowing that we're all working to build our business keeps us in check."

That focus on building their business keeps the Winklers on the lookout for the best technology available. "Technology has always played a huge role at J.W. Winco," relates Mark. Robert agrees: "Whether we're using the latest engineered tools to modify our machine components or implementing a new solution to streamline internal processes, we try to take advantage of everything that's available."

And Activant Prophet 21 helps the Winklers minimize miscommunications while cutting the amount of time they spend chasing reports and other important business data and documentation. The solution transmits information seamlessly - in real time - throughout the company, enabling any of the Winklers to view up-to-the minute customer, financial, and inventory information.

The Winklers agree: "Prophet 21 helps us monitor our inventory, our financials, and our customers in a timelier, more effective manner..It's a great resource that's certainly helping us improve our reputation."

The Decision to Change

The Winkler brothers began investigating Prophet 21 when they realized employees were increasingly handling tasks outside of the company's legacy Activant Faspac solution. "The sales department did quotes in Word, and kept pricing and customer contact files in Excel. Everything looked great going out, but when we needed to refer back to something, it was cumbersome and took way too much time to find," Robert says. John agrees: "We needed to harness all of our data in one place."

Because Prophet 21 has the tools each employee needs to successfully complete his or her job, all pertinent information is stored within. "It's great to have everyone - from the clerks in the front office to the guy unloading vendor shipments - using the same solution," Mark says. "It helps us maintain uniformity." And because Prophet 21 keeps everything in its SQL Server database, employees must no longer manage endless stacks of paperwork.

This efficiency, combined with many others, has contributed to a substantial increase in employee productivity, John contends. "We've seen a significant time-savings in our daily processes," he says. John contends: "Since implementing Prophet 21, we've been able to handle a 30 percent increase in business without hiring any new employees."

Exceeding Goals

J.W. Winco was founded in 1978, and in 1982 entered into the market of selling standard machine hand operating components and assembly hardware to mainly OEM and distribution companies. The company services the entire American market as well as Mexico. It has also expanded its product and service offerings: Today, J.W. Winco has an in-house machining facility, offering complete secondary machining of Standard Machine Components and special, custom-manufactured component parts.

While offering value-added services like secondary machining, kit packaging and special labeling are vital to remaining their customers' supplier of choice, John, Mark, and Robert realize that they must also focus on exceeding basic service expectations.

For example, customers expect the right products to be delivered on time, every time. And, even though J.W. Winco consistently maintains high fill and inventory accuracy rates, they needed a solution to help them maintain those rates and provide even better accuracy for future growth.

Prophet 21 has helped them exceed their own goals. Within a few months of going live, inventory monitoring capabilities and the ability to instantly adjust stock levels to reflect accurate counts enabled J.W. Winco to increase inventory accuracy rates from 94 to 97 percent. "That's a pretty significant increase, especially when you're above the 90 percent level," Mark says.

Also, because they import more than 70 percent of the SKUs in their warehouse, one of the Winklers' everyday battles is determining how profitable they are on any product or product line. "We never really had the ability to factor in inbound or outbound freight costs, or duties and brokerage fees," Mark says. As a result, a product's actual cost may have differed greatly from the cost reflected in the company's previous software system.

Because they are able to now add these expenses into the final cost of an item, the Winklers have an accurate snapshot of their true inventory costs.

Other Benefits

Leveraging Activant technology has helped J.W. Winco excel in many other areas - including sales and marketing, and through internal employee recognition programs.

For example, Knowledge Management Center gives executives the ability to see low- or high-level detail on individual and team activity and productivity. The Winklers use this information to dole out praise and perks: "It can be as minor as learning that we should commend someone in the warehouse for sending out more packages in one afternoon than during any other day in the month," says Robert. "We can tell our employees that we see that they're doing a great job, and that really goes a long way."

The Winklers have used Prophet 21's extensive pricing capabilities to simplify their pricing process and introduce new sales pricing programs. "The new system gives us extensive opportunities to build better pricing methods, something that we did not have in our past system. The Pricing Libraries, Books, and Pages are a great tool and have already helps us organize many of our standard and special product prices. Providing incentives for our customers through sales programs and better pricing methods is now a reality," says John.

Concludes John: "Distributors need to add value through products and services without increasing costs exponentially. Activant knows what tools we need to deliver that value in a cost-effective way - and helps us become more successful in every level of our organization."

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