!! 059 Esker Deliveryware Case Study Oed Us
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Situation
With a heritage spanning more than 75 years, OED takes
great pride in its long-standing commitment to, experience
with, and knowledge of the outdoor equipment industry.
Yet, over the years as the company continued to grow, it
found that many of its business processes didn’t scale well,
and it became apparent that inefciencies were holding
back the company’s further growth.
“We were utilizing old-school distribution tactics, such as
taking orders over the phone and through voicemail. Then
we moved to receiving orders through fax. However, we
have a small team and it was increasingly difcult for us
to keep up with the growing demand doing business that
way,” said Holland. “We moved the sales process online,
implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
as well as an e-commerce solution. While that made things
much easier for us, it presented all new challenges for our
customers.”
OED was using an Activant e-commerce solution to
centralize its sales inventory and order entry process. The
Activant solution provided an easy and seamless way for OED
customers to go online and place orders instantly. However,
many customers still preferred that OED accommodate
their preference for faxing orders. They wanted to continue
to fax orders manually as they had been doing all along.
“We were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said
Holland. “We had already made an investment in the ERP
system and e-commerce solution, and understood their
value. But our customers always come rst and we needed
a way to adhere to their preference for faxing without losing
the efciency gained through technology.”
OED sought a software solution that could be positioned
between the fax machine and the Activant application to
transport the incoming fax documents seamlessly into the
ERP solution.
Solution
Holland looked at offerings from several different software
companies, including TeleForm, but it was his pre-existing
familiarity with Esker that initially prompted him to check
out the Esker DeliveryWare document automation solution.
OED had been using Esker Fax since 2002 for outbound fax
delivery and realized now that not only would it be easy to
expand its relationship with Esker to include the electronic
capture of inbound customer orders, but also that Esker
offers a solution that could facilitate this without any
overhaul of the rest of the existing IT infrastructure.
Esker DeliveryWare provides a single platform for automating
the ow of business transaction documents directly into
and out of ERP systems and other enterprise applications,
eliminating manual order entry and physical document
handling.
By February 2006, OED went live with Esker DeliveryWare.
Having completed the entire implementation process, as
well as the education and training, they needed to learn
how to use the product and build rules for document
capture and image recognition within a week.
“We were skeptical at rst but quickly found Esker
DeliveryWare to t in as an extension of the business.
Integration with Activant was a major concern, but we
pulled it off without any problems,” said Holland. “We are
more efcient — less hours are spent manually entering
Outdoor Equipment Distributors
Integrating efciency and customer service
with ERP and e-commerce systems
Outdoor Equipment Distributors (OED) is a wholesale distributor of outdoor power equipment for North
Carolina, South Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Founded in 1931, the company
has grown from selling lawn mowers to providing products from leading outdoor power equipment lines, such
as ECHO, Scag, Exmark, Little Wonder, Mantis, Billy Goat, Classen and Grass Gobbler. Currently, OED partners
with more than 500 independent dealers, distributing their products and services to both homeowners and
commercial users.
Todd Holland is OED’s IT and Operations Manager.
We are more efficient — less hours are spent manually
entering orders and, more importantly, our customers
do not have to jump through hoops in order to do
business with us.
Todd Holland § Operations Manager § Outdoor Equipment
Distributors
CASE STUDY
www.esker.com
DISTRIBUTION
ESKER DELIVERYWARE
orders and, more importantly, our customers do not have to
jump through hoops in order to do business with us.”
Currently, OED receives about 90 fax orders a day, but at
seasonal times of peak business the company can receive
up to 200 orders a day. Prior to Esker DeliveryWare, it took
customer service employees about 5 minutes to process
each order into the ERP solution — and rarely could the staff
process more than 35 orders per day per customer services
employee. Now, as all documents are kept electronic,
this process takes only 3 minutes, and the system has the
capacity to process thousands in a 24-hour period.
Benefits and future plans
“The benets Esker DeliveryWare has brought to our
company have been tremendous,” said Holland. “We no
longer need to hand-key orders, which has also reduced
errors on customer orders signicantly. It is such a powerful
tool that I know we have only scratched the surface in
terms of utilizing its capabilities. It can take information from
any document in any form and translate it into anything
you want. Basically, if you think about it, it’s doable with
Esker DeliveryWare.”
Holland has built 15 rules for incoming faxes and has also
used the software to transmit electronic invoices to General
Electric. Speeding the transmission process results in OED
receiving faster payment for its equipment — a signicant
cash ow boost for the small company that sells large pieces
of equipment valued in the thousands of dollars.
“I’m a one-man shop here so I just don’t have as much
time as I’d like to spend with Esker DeliveryWare. The more
things I can do with technology only makes things easier
for our customers and our employees,” said Holland. “The
technology is consistent, reliable and intuitive. It’s been
money well spent on our part because it has all the avors
of document delivery we’ll ever need.”
Looking ahead, Holland plans to build more rules to
capture additional customer orders. In fact, he hopes to
eliminate all paper documents and the process of hand-
keying orders into the Activant solution altogether. Another
signicant initiative will be to achieve electronic archiving,
with the goal of emptying all of the company’s le cabinets
currently stuffed tight with paper.
“The business community keeps unnecessarily killing trees
with all the paper we use,” said Holland. “I want to reach
the point where we do not print anything at all. As we
continue to work with Esker DeliveryWare I know this will be
something we can accomplish sooner rather than later.”
The benefits Esker DeliveryWare has brought to our company have been tremendous. We no longer need to hand-key
orders, which has also reduced errors on customer orders significantly. It is such a powerful tool that I know we have
only scratched the surface in terms of utilizing its capabilities.
Todd Holland § Operations Manager § Outdoor Equipment Distributors
CASE STUDY
© 2008 Esker S.A. All rights reserved. Esker and the Esker logo are registered trademarks of Esker S.A. in the
U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
CS-EDW-US-059-A
For more information:
Americas § www.esker.com Germany § www.esker.de Spain § www.esker.es
Australia § www.esker.com.au Italy § www.esker.it United Kingdom § www.esker.co.uk
France § www.esker.fr Singapore § www.esker.com.sg
CASE STUDY
