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IN DEPTH: Technology Tools

Boosting Efficiency
Most dealers have moved past the basics and are looking for ways to add value. “The LBM industry is coming of age from a technology standpoint,” says Rigby. “It’s no longer just about making the back office more efficient and effective. That’s been accomplished. Now it’s about front-office sales growth and empowering employees to do their jobs in the new age of how people do things and how they want to communicate.”

Mike Limas, vice president at DMSi, agrees. “There’s a desire for understanding deep business logic and having a better analysis of what products to be buying, how to price them and how to automate systems for more efficiency.

Dealers are doing more value-added processes for customers beyond simply selling products. Builders want more services to help them work more efficiently, so dealers need more support in-house for the products and services they provide.”

LBM Resources

White Paper: Building Supply Industry Insights Report 2022

With most businesses now running hybrid ERP, our report reveals what hard-working building suppliers really require from their ERP partners and solutions.
agility customer scorecardThe Agility Customer Scorecard, one of the productivity solutions from DMSi, summarizes customer-account details including total sales, top products, on-hold orders, open A/R and YTD-LYTD comparisons. Easy-to-read charts and the mobile-friendly design lets sales people review key points with a glance and better serve customers in the field.

That means having systems that pull out significant data to be analyzed. “A key issue we’re hearing is that customers want information delivered to them that’s important rather than having to hunt for it,” says Brent Heavican, vice president of technology at DMSi. “They want the system to send them information proactively when new content changes the status quo. They want to know about exceptions and notification of immediate issues. They also want good news—they want notifications of big sales or different products being bought.”

They’re also looking to expand their systems. “Pro dealers are looking for additional benefits from their systems, such as CRM apps that can be added to the main platform,” says John Maiuri, vice president of sales for ECi’s LBMH division. “They especially are looking for inventory controls at a high level of control. They want warehouse-management solutions and want to be able to leverage their information to provide better analysis and more efficiency.”

The need for more efficiency extends to BIM (Building Information Modeling) and estimating programs. “Dealers are looking for ways to save time,” says Greg Lentz, president of PrebuiltML. “They want to be faster and more efficient at their activities. What we hear the most is that they want to do things faster, but they want to balance that speed with ensuring they remain accurate and don’t miss any steps or details. They want to perform tasks faster without sacrificing quality.” (For more on BIM, see page 6 of this article.)

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