Labor Savers: Keeping business on track
The following article is part of a series of interviews with companies offering solutions designed for speed and efficiency at or near the job site. The series ran as “Labor Savers” in the March 2018 issue of HBSDealer.
LBM dealers are trying to do more with less and run as efficiently as possible. As product manager for BisTrack Product Management at Epicor, Jason Parchomchuk spends a lot of time studying the systems that help dealers make that happen.
How are dealers handling the labor shortage?
Some are providing installed sales and their own labor along with the ability to manage projects. With more dealers providing installed sales, project management is something they are looking for. We are finding that many of our dealers are providing additional services to help their builder customers.
How has the labor situation affected your go-to-market strategy?
A lot of it is new functionality to speed up older processes. We’ve expanded AP Automation to support overhead and additional cost invoices and supplier credit notes. We’ve also invested a lot in our customer self-service. It cuts down how long it takes to enter data. Customers of BisTrack software clients can use ACH to enter their banking information straight into the portal for account payments.
What’s the pitch for BisTrack software and converting new customers?
One of our key pitches for BisTrack software is simplifying the complexities of your business — allowing you to do more with less staff. Along with leveraging data and accelerating sales, we are providing a way for your staff to do more and to make the decisions needed to accomplish jobs more effectively and more profitably. BisTrack software clients do not have to run multiples reports, they can see everything they need to see at once without printing it out separately.
What are some of the speed factors Epicor BisTrack software brings to the table?
Each department has its own efficiencies that can be added in. Purchasing has EDI that will speed up vendor communications.
The Epicor BisTrack AP Automation tool is a newer application we’ve designed to help with accounts payable processing — supplier invoices and credit notes can now be imported and handled much more efficiently than they were previously.
Our Android applications for stock counting and yard picking/receiving eliminate paper documents and re-entering data into the system.
BisTrack business intelligence functionality provides reports, dashboards and smart views, which can all be customized. The user isn’t getting overloaded with information that’s not applicable to their role.
They can see information when they need to and how they need to.
Can you quantify time savings for dealers when using BisTrack software?
There are many metrics BisTrack software can help to improve. For example, with the AP Automation tool, some dealers have reported reducing time on invoice processing by up to eight hours a week. Other dealers have reported that if a sales staff is using the BisTrack software import process for estimating, they save hundreds of hours.
And that leads to efficiency?
In the case of dispatch and delivery, we’ve had clients reallocating up to two full-time personnel to other areas of the business because they’ve saved so much time.
Catch Up: HBSDealer published one Q&A every day this week with someone from each of the following companies regarding its labor-saving products: Hyphen Solutions, White Lightning, Georgia-Pacific, Epicor and E-Z Gutter.
