Established in 1946, Standard Supply is the largest HVAC supply company in Texas. Standard Supply has 23 locations covering nearly all of Texas and Oklahoma. The company has earned the reputation of having the largest and broadest line of HVAC supplies in the region.
Standard Supply implemented the Epicor Prophet 21 enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution in 2004. “We had a proprietary system that had been modified to the point it was useless,” explained Will Dunn, regional vice president of Standard Supply. “We looked at all of the major software systems. What sold us on Prophet 21 were the people and the support we believed we would get—and we did get.”
A new and improved customer experience
Prophet 21 has changed the way that Standard Supply interacts with its customers. Since Standard Supply’s products are similar to other companies, their customer service is what makes them stand out. “We use Prophet 21 for every function—every aspect of dealing with the customer one-on-one,” said Liza Ellis, customer service manager, Standard Supply. “We use it to check inventory, check customer information, and it just makes everything so smooth and seamless.”
Ellis continued, “Prophet 21 is so easy to maneuver and find what I need. Not just for me, but anybody on my team. It is always there for us.”
“The accuracy of our invoicing to our customers is way better,” added Dunn. “It’s super easy to look things up and we can see up to the minute what is in inventory at any branch. It’s great, and it’s accurate—everything is accurate. I love that about Prophet 21.”
The time saved with Prophet 21 allows Standard Supply to spend more time on their customers—resulting in more sales. “At Standard Supply, we try and make it to where we spend more time selling and less time trying to do the paper work side of it,” explained Chad Rawlings, vice president of sales at Standard Supply. “With Prophet 21, the software allows us to pull up exactly what we want, when we want it, and find the history of a customer from the time we started. Any one of our reps can go into a branch and pull up information on a customer in a matter of seconds. It just allows us to be quicker and better at our job.”
Driving efficiency with easy to-use software
One of the biggest impacts of implementing the Prophet 21 system has been the significant efficiency boost. “Since 2007, when we started implementing a lot of the tools provided by Prophet 21, we started seeing an immediate increase in efficiency of 40 percent,” said Frank Williams, regional distribution center operations manager, Standard Supply. “And since, we’ve tweaked some of those processing tools that were provided to get an additional 20 percent efficiency increase.”
The skyrocket of efficiency has helped Standard Supply obtain new branches and acquire more customers. “Standard Supply wants to grow and be as big and as profitable as we can, and we have to have partners like Prophet 21 to help us get there,” added Rawlings. “The feedback and the data we can get immediately allows us to be more efficient. To look at different areas and see what we need to buy, how we need to buy it, and how much we’ve used gives us feedback for other areas to move into and grow.”
“We’ve grown from 2 branches to 23 at this point, covering pretty much all of Texas. We have no desire to do anything except continue to grow—add more business, add more branches—and technology is our biggest tool. Prophet 21 has enabled us to grow. Our biggest growth years have all been since we implemented Prophet 21,” concluded Dunn.
