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Tague Lumber

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Tague Lumber is family owned and operated business backed by four generations of industry experience. Founded in 1908 by James E. Tague, the Philadelphia-based company provides lumber and custom millwork, as well as operating a professional design center where architects, contractors and remodelers can educate clients about a range of products.

With the acquisition of two new lumber yards in recent years, Tague Lumber's successful growth presented its management with an IT challenge: to find a more user-friendly, functional information system with better reporting. The solution: Activant Falcon™.

Out with the old...

"We had an old legacy system that was totally inadequate for our needs," explains Chick Chain, Tague Lumber's controller. "We had it since 1994, and it was designed as a single-store system. The equipment was old, and the software was old. Since we now had three stores, it was stretched to the limit."

In his search for a new system, Chain explored his options, comparing products from Activant and two other lumber industry system providers. "I went to the Activant user conference over a year ago and talked not only to Activant, but also to its customers," he says. "I was totally impressed with what the Falcon system would do, and the enthusiasm of the users. This was clearly a growing product."

"I also liked Falcon's ease of inquiry and thorough reporting," Chain continues. "One of the other industry providers had software that was proprietary and I thought that maybe we'd need too much programming. Another system provider proposed a system that was more of a Windows overlap and I wasn't happy with that." What Chain was looking for was a system that architecturally represented next-generation technology.

...in with the new

Tague Lumber debuted their new Falcon system in February 2002, starting first with order processing, general ledger, accounts payable and Cyberquery Report Writer. "We exceeded our implementation target date by one month (30 days) and converted over a weekend," recalls Chain. "Activant's project management plan was excellent. And one of the nicest things about Falcon is that we were able to use our old system's hardware. We had acquired a third yard with an Activant system and were able to reuse Activant's terminals, printers and scanners on the Falcon system. That was a big advantage. Other than the CPU, we didn't have to invest any additional money in hardware. We would have had to spend $60,000 for new hardware had we gone with another system."

Building on that success, Tague Lumber now plans to expand its system and implement Falcon's document imaging and wireless capabilities. "Document imaging will help us eliminate paperwork and allow us to get information into the system more quickly," explains Chain. "Wireless will help us enter inventory into the system as we receive it without having to do a lot of paperwork."

Understanding the business

For Chain and Tague Lumber, as with other Activant customers, it is vital that their computer systems supplier has a complete understanding of the lumber business. "Activant has the best experience in the industry," Chain enthuses. "Although we've had to learn new ways of doing things, we've been able to utilize the Falcon system without any custom programming. That's the benefit of proven next-generation software."

In addition to Activant having a superior product, what has really impressed Chain about the company is the people. "They really take a personal interest in making sure that we're successful," he says. "Our trainer has made herself available whenever we have a need. And when we put in a support call, there has always been a helpful person at the other end of the line. Their responsive service is really important to us."

Saving time, ensuring success

While Tague Lumber has only few months of Falcon use under its belt, Chain can already see both considerable time savings and added functionality. "Those were two of the main reasons why we bought the Falcon system," he says. "With the new database, we're not doing printouts every day. We used to go through four or five boxes of paper a month -- now, we don't use any paper. I can already see that we're a lot faster than we were under the old system. When I run our financial statements, the Activant Falcon saves me a couple of hours a month."