Case Study

DANBURY PLUMBING SUPPLY

“One for the little guy” is the motto at Danbury Plumbing Supply, a forward-thinking plumbing/HVAC distributor that is defying the odds and taking on a major home improvement chain head on with an innovative kitchen and bath showroom that is quickly emerging as a major portion of the company’s business. Danbury is optimizing the power of DDI System to automate this showroom.

Under Mr. Hunt’s leadership, Danbury Plumbing Supply has transformed its 30-year-old Creative Bath showroom into an innovative plumbing fixture and accessory showpiece that spans 6,000 square feet.

According to Mr. Hunt, his vision for Danbury Plumbing was the creation of a paperless environment to power his supply house. Hoping to realize this vision, Hunt invested in a distribution technology solution from a small vendor that offered basic functionality, but lacked key features. Plus, it required employees to hand write all details for sales orders – totally defeating the vision of the paperless showroom. “To stay and remain competitive in the distribution space, we needed a technology system with proper a inventory control system and billing infrastructure to run our business successfully,” said Hunt. “This led us, ultimately, to search for a more comprehensive distribution system.”

Hunt began his search for a new solution by speaking to surrounding area plumbing supply houses, including one wholesaler that was using distribution management software from DDI System. Hunt was impressed with the feedback on DDI and spoke to Adam Waller, president of DDI System. “After speaking to Adam, I could tell that DDI understood the plumbing distribution industry. DDI was also proactive rather than reactive in their approach to my business,” Hunt said. In 1996, Danbury Plumbing Supply deployed the DDI System at its supply house and Creative Bath showroom locations.

On the supply side, DDI engineers installed the DDI System onto five workstations and three terminals at the wholesaler’s counter. According to Hunt, the conversion process was seamless. “Within 24 hours, DDI engineers migrated our inventory and customer data into the DDI System. The next day we were up and running and eager to maximize the solution’s functionality. Today, we have totally automated our operations and decreased the chances of human error. In addition, information is available instantly right from the counter terminals.” Danbury has also implemented DDI’s electronic signature capture and POS (Point-of-Sale) features. In terms of Danbury’s kitchen and bath showroom, Creative Bath, the DDI System was deployed on eight workstations with access to the Danbury warehouse mainframe via DSL. “Using DDI, we can easily check inventory, view orders and better communicate with our main branch,” said Hunt. To assist sales personnel with logging customer preferences and special orders, Danbury will soon implement DDI’s Electronic Document Scanning solution to scan handwritten notes. Once scanned, documents can be immediately archived and available on the DDI System. Danbury is also using the system to capture and measure employee sales. According to Hunt, he uses the DDI System to determine the profitability of each salesperson. “This functionality gives us an accurate measurement of showroom and salesperson revenue,” said Hunt. “We can see which items are not selling well and remove them from our inventory, increasing efficiency.”

In addition to order tracking functionality, Danbury is using the DDI System to alert its showroom sales staff of incoming product shipments. “When an order arrives at our warehouse, an email is generated by the DDI System and sent to the appropriate salesperson,” said Hunt. “We can then alert the customer of the available product.” In terms of customer history features, Danbury uses DDI to build its growing customer history database. “When a customer comes into the showroom, regardless if a purchase is made, we enter their information into the system,” he said. “If a customer does not make a purchase, the DDI System will remind our showroom staff to make a follow up call.”

According to Hunt, Danbury is in the process of implementing pricing routines for products in the DDI System. “Currently, we are manually importing pricing information from our vendors, but that should be a thing of the past after our latest implementation,” he said. DDI integrated an easy-to-use labeling system into the Danbury Plumbing project. “When items arrive at the receiving department, labels are printed on the DDI System and affixed to the appropriate products,” he said.

Located just three miles from home improvement giant Home Depot and a Lowe’s currently under construction, Creative Bath has been successful in growing business and keeping its customer base intact. “What separates us from the bigger companies like Home Depot are our roots in the community that allows us to provide the highest levels of customer service,” said Hunt. “In addition, the quality of our product and sales staff, as well as technical assistance is superior to the larger chains.” Hunt is highly satisfied with the DDI System – from its advanced features to its responsive customer support. “Technical support has performed very well,” said Hunt. “We experienced a power outage. After putting a call into DDI customer service, their engineers went into our system to reboot our workstations instantly.”

Since implementation in 1996, Danbury has realized impressive ROI with the DDI System. “In 1994, before we implemented DDI System, we had 16 employees and revenues of $4 million,” said Hunt. “Without question, the DDI System was responsible for doubling our sales numbers by streamlining our business practices and creating sales efficiencies.”