Activant Eagle Helps Build Retail Business at Dallas County Farmers Exchange
In the center portion of the Missouri Ozarks lies Dallas County, where farmers and rural residents have patronized Dallas County Farmer's Exchange (DCFE) since 1921. DCFE, an agribusiness firm that sells products ranging from animal feed to small engines, now has three locations. Over the years, they have seen their business shift from primarily farm supply to more retail sales. In response, they looked to Activant for a solution that could handle retail demands, including a new hardware product line with hundreds of thousands of SKUs. With their previous system, they had no bar code scanning capability and little potential to streamline the type of processes that improve customer service.
Akin to the Missour-ee/Missour-uh split, DCFE installed an Activant Legacy system at the Buffalo location in 2000, then went live with Activant Eagle™ for Windows at their brand-new facility in Fair Grove in July 2002. But just as all Missourians work together in spite of pronunciation, DCFE's Activant systems are integrated to allow for multi-store inventory management and stock transfer. With Radio Frequency (RF) technology, bar code scanning and accurate inventory, DCFE delivers the kind of service hard-working regulars expect.
Out With the Old, in With the New
The conversion to Eagle for Windows went extremely well, says Angie Doing, manager of the Fair Grove location. "We ended one month on the old system, and began a new month on the Eagle system." To train employees on Activant Point-of-Sale and other applications, Activant first sent an onsite trainer and then followed-up with a phone trainer. "We assigned one person to work directly with the phone trainer, and then relied on that person to train the rest of us at the store," says Angie.
Perhaps the most significant change at POS was the implementation of Eagle bar code scanning. "With our old system, we weren't even capable of scanning UPC codes. It's really been a godsend for us," exclaims Angie.
For inventory updates on the fly, DCFE replaced clipboard, paper and pencil with portable RF terminals and printers. On the floor, they scan items and change prices, descriptions or quantity-on-hand. With the attached printer, they print replacement bin labels that reflect new pricing or codes. Employees walk the aisles with the RF terminal, managing inventory while the store is open. "We like it because it's portable. We can walk to a product and check inventories-on-hand right there," says Angie.
With RF technology, DCFE has also been able to manage periodic counts without the help of an outside inventory service. "We started doing our own inventory using the RF guns," says Angie. "Because our department managers are responsible for doing cycle counts, our inventory is much more accurate. Before, when the inventory service did the counting for us, items that we sold as "each" were sometimes counted by the box, often with quantities of 100 items or more. Immediately after the inventory service left, we began making corrections."
Multi-store Features Helps Deliver Products Customers Need
With Eagle for Windows, DCFE reports that customer service is greatly improved. With the intuitive interface and pop-up windows, sales personnel and cashiers spend less time moving back-and-forth between screens to find needed information. "A simple task, like looking up customer numbers, is easier with Eagle," says Angie. "If I have a customer standing in line and we're out of stock on an item they need, I go to the Inventory Maintenance screen, change the store number and check inventory levels at our other stores. I can then say, ‘I'm sorry, Sir. I'm out, but the computer shows that Buffalo has three. I can call them and transfer one to this store.' And then our customer is delighted that we've taken that extra step to satisfy them."
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