No-ring orders

This master distributor of O-rings and gaskets hopes to reduce phone and fax orders as more customers migrate to online ordering.

by Rich Vurva

The telephone rings more than 1,000 times in a typical day at American Packing and Gasket. As a result, APG receives 500 to 600 orders per day. In addition to the phone activity, the Houston-based master distributor of gaskets, O-rings, hydraulic seals, industrial hose couplings and other products receives more than 100 orders by fax, plus numerous requests for quotes.

“In short, our inside sales group is very busy,” says company president Bill Flesner.

To ease the burden on inside sales, but more importantly to improve customer service, APG established an online e-commerce system that enables customers to place orders over the Internet. Less than a month after going live with eConnect from Integrated Systems Technology (IST) of Irving, Texas, APG began to see the benefits of using the new technology.

“Since we started offering online ordering capability, we’ve already seen several orders from new customers,” Flesner says. “We’re getting just a few orders a day now, but we expect it to grow.”

The company’s Web site previously allowed customers to place orders online, but it was cumbersome to use. Plus, customers didn’t have access to historical information because it wasn’t tied into the IST back-end system. The new system uses Microsoft’s .NET technology to talk to existing IST modules.

The system offers several features Flesner expects will make it popular with distributor customers.

For example, it maintains a running dollar total during order entry. Distributors can also store multiple favorite orders, and can call up and submit a favorite order without having to re-key the information. Users can modify favorite orders or set up an e-mail notification reminding them to log on and reorder certain favorites.

Customers can also track orders online, even if they placed their order by phone or fax. The system allows customers to access shipment information to determine if and when an item was shipped and to retrieve a tracking number to trace a shipment.

“Customers can track orders using our order number or their own purchase order number. They can also search and view all the orders for their account location,” says marketing manager Cliff Hamberlin. “Once the information for a specific order is displayed, they can determine how many boxes were shipped, the weight of each box and the shipper’s tracking number.”

APG can assign various security levels to users. For instance, a customer with an established contract can pay by open invoice or by credit card. Other customers see only the credit card payment option.

Distributor customers also can choose to drop ship direct to their end-user customers or to choose blind shipments.

“We want to make it as easy as possible for distributors to do business with us,” says Flesner.

Buying from a master distributor helps distributors lower inventory costs, and doing business online can lower the cost of doing business, since their people don’t have to spend as much time onthe phone.

Customers access eConnect with a private login and password. Since eConnect links with APG’s Intrust distribution software package, pricing information is up-to-date and accurate, and customers see their individual pricing. After they place an order, customers receive an e-mail confirming the transaction. The appropriate APG salesperson also automatically receives an e-mail notifying them of the sales activity.

“Our corporate mission is to get orders out as fast as possible. Most go out the day we receive them. The more customers we can get to place orders via the Internet, the more efficient we’ll be,” says Flesner.

APG sent a broadcast fax to about 8,000 active customers to promote the online ordering capability.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2003 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2003.

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