E.C. Barton & Company is a strong regional building material chain throughout seven southern states. All 57 sites converted from Activant CSD™ to Activant Falcon™ over the past 18 months. Conversion was smooth and employees appreciate Falcon's increased functionality. Operational improvements are noted throughout the organization. Special orders are processed more easily. Accounts Receivable collection letters are generated automatically. Easy creation of management reports provides faster visibility into operational performance.
Regional chain with the goal to grow
E.C. Barton & Company is a 100-year old, employee-owned chain of 57 lumber-related businesses operating in Arkansas, Missouri and five other states. There are 24 retail lumber yards under the Barton's name, 28 Surplus Warehouse stores, two King Kitchen custom cabinet divisions, a wholesale operation called Builders Material Company, and a brokerage operation called E.C. B. Brokerage. Approximately 450 employee partners generate more than $100 million in annual revenue.
E.C. Barton is growing by acquiring businesses that fit within its current business model. During the past year, E.C. Barton acquired a seven-location lumber yard chain in Missouri and added another building surplus store into their portfolio. Although happy with their CSD system, E.C. Barton outgrew CSD's capabilities.
Smooth conversion from previous system
In the fall of 2000, E.C. Barton began converting to Falcon by starting with General Ledger and Accounts Payable. For several months, E.C. Barton's central accounting office used Falcon while stores still operated on CSD. At the same time, Activant Professional Services was teaching E.C. Barton trainers how to train all E.C. Barton employees to use Falcon. Store migration began with the Surplus Warehouse stores and completed with all 57 locations running on Falcon.
"Falcon has many improvements and enhancements over CSD. Some employees were reluctant to switch, but now that they've used Falcon and see its capabilities, they'd never go back," said Rick Cheshier, MIS director, E.C. Barton & Company. "There are just too many things we can do with Falcon that we couldn't do before."
Special Orders and accounts receivable improve store operations
All locations, and in particular the King Kitchen divisions, have a great number of special orders. E.C. Barton bought a third-party interface to 20/20 that allows kitchen designs created in 20/20 to automatically convert to an order in Falcon. In less than five minutes, an entire design is converted to a Falcon purchase order, ready for the customer to sign. It's dramatically faster and, by eliminating manual rekeying, the process is virtually error-free.
Falcon provides the AR staff and store management with more information about each customer's account and aging reports that speeds collections. E.C. Barton uses a third-party product, CyberQuery, to generate a report from Falcon data that completely automates the creation of collection letters. Instead of a multi-day project, it now takes less than 15 minutes to produce collection letters.
Yet another operational benefit is Falcon's ability to transmit payment transactions directly to Bank of America, E.C. Barton's bank. A report that took only a few hours to create, completely automated bank communications, resulting in time savings and increased accuracy.
Simplified management reporting generates results
Prior to Falcon, reporting was cumbersome. For example, one person spent several days each month preparing a group of management reports. Data had to be gathered from multiple sources and re-keyed into Excel. With Falcon, after the initial report design of a couple of days, those same reports are generated in less than one day. In general, managers have access to information when they need it in order to make decisions. Staff and managers at all levels in the organization appreciate Falcon's capabilities and how much easier it is to run the business. By using data to drive decisions and using technology throughout the organization, E.C. Barton operates more efficiently.
"You can't overlook the importance of using data for decision making. Falcon makes it very easy to provide reports to management. We spend less time creating reports and instead perform activities that improve the business," stated Cheshier.
