Good habits are hard to change

by Kevin Kapala

Change for change's sake is not necessarily progress. The progressive approach to improving bottom-line profitability is to not only embrace change in areas of your business that are glaringly in need of retooling, but to have the discipline to analyze what currently works.

Sometimes, embracing change is the right business decision. Such was the case with Marshall E. Campbell, a Port Huron, Mich.-based distributor of industrial supplies, cutting tools, fluid power, electrical products and other MRO supplies. After examining industry trends in the industrial and MRO arena, the company realized its enterprise software provider’s package was limited in functionality.

“We are becoming a 24/7 business,” says company president Jack Campbell. “Because of that, we took a good look at how we operate. Our old software was adequate, but we needed a fresh start. We need to be ahead of trends in the industry, and we weren’t getting there with our old package.”

An increasing number of customers were asking Marshall E. Campbell to provide them with high-technology tools such as e-catalogs to help them better manage their businesses.

“Having these tools will help us win business. The case to change software was an easy one,” he says. 

However, instead of making a company-wide software change, managers analyzed the impact across all three Marshall E. Campbell locations. They looked at each traditional functional area of the organization to gain insight into each department’s processes, the software tools the employees depended on, and how effectively those tools were being used. They also looked at the context in which their employees, and even customers, used their software. They ultimately decided to change enterprise software vendors but also to continue partnering with an existing business intelligence software provider.

If it works, enhance it
“When determining our choices, we looked at how our employees and customers were using all of our business software,” says Campbell.

The management team realized the company’s data warehouse and business intelligence software continued to be integral to their core business and their ability to offer customers full integrated supply management.

“We already had such a powerful point-and-click tool with all our variables in it,” he says.

Managers didn’t want to abandon the company’s business intelligence and data warehouse solutions because both were optimized for use over the Internet just a few years ago. The upgrade gave integrated supply managers (who are embedded in customer accounts and work with plant personnel on the manufacturing floor) the ability to access customer-specific product usage data at their fingertips.

“We recently had a plant manager who believed his company was using an extremely high level of a certain part. Our integrated supply manager was able to use our Web-enabled business intelligence software to immediately show their usage level was normal according to historical usage,” Campbell explains. 

Continuing a valued partnership
Embracing technology translated into increased responsiveness in time-to-serve customers and enhanced the supplier-customer dynamic. Marshall E. Campbell enjoys the same type of relationship with its business intelligence software provider, Informediate Inc. of Akron, Ohio.

The relationship dates to 1998, when Marshall E. Campbell participated in Informediate’s software development consortium.

“We worked with them and other distributors on how the business intelligence software would be designed and built. This was really important to us because our business is very diversified and we sell into many vertical markets. Consequently, we have a lot going on. Our data points are so specialized that we needed to take a deep look at all the data points across the business. We were able to work with them to give us a new way to extract data and evaluate it,” Campbell says. 

Keeping the relationship intact and business intelligence tools in place was an important prerequisite when choosing a new enterprise software provider.

“Distributors like Marshall E. Campbell, who truly utilize the technology that is available to them, have a distinct differential advantage over those who don’t,” says Informediate president Mike Klemp. “Our company made a strategic decision to focus our people’s time and resources on driving real value to our distributor customers. With a customer-centric approach, we believe everyone along the supply chain wins.”

IT support is crucial
Having the right tools is one thing, but using them is another. Marshall E. Campbell has two full-time technology people on staff to maintain and drive the use of technology throughout the organization.

“We not only invest in hardware and software, we also invest in people,” says Campbell. “Tom Malone, our director of information technology, has been instrumental in the development and focus of our IT commitment. And Marcus Fawcett, a former employee who is now an IT consultant for us, was dedicated to driving the relationship between Marshall E. Campbell and Informediate.”

Their commitment to understanding their options and utilizing technology enabled Marshall E. Campbell to be proactive rather than reactive.

“We look at the health of our organization daily. Not only are we able to analyze all departments and traditional areas such as financial and inventory control, we are able to analyze our customer service responsiveness and our sales team’s performance,” he says.

When Marshall E. Campbell changed its sales compensation plan to better align the goals of the sales force with the company’s goals, the data warehouse was an invaluable tool to extract information that determined key performance indicators. Controller Kate Moran uses the tool every month to manage the compensation plan based on hard data rather than on conjecture.

A high percentage of Marshall E. Campbell employees, including the management team, purchasing, inside and outside sales and branch managers, use the business intelligence tools. However, staff empowerment begins with sharing the business information in an open book environment.

“Anyone who wants to better themselves and add value to the company has access to the data and the opportunity to learn and use the business intelligence software,” Campbell says.

Giving employees online access to information they need to do their jobs eliminates paperwork and makes employees more efficient, says Klemp.

“Marshall E. Campbell eliminated the time associated with having to pull reports and gives their employees access to the data 24/7 via the Web. As a result, their employees are more productive and are more customer-focused. All this translates into a boost to the bottom line,” he says.

Staying on top of industry trends and technology can be overwhelming. Marshall E. Campbell learned to leverage industry change to its advantage when it made sense while retaining current relationships with best-in-class business partners. At the end of the day, Jack Campbell believes identifying value is quite simple.

“For us, looking at any change, the investment has to be prudent and cost-effective. We don’t just spend money to spend it,” he says.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2005 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2005.

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