A home center goes high tech

With aggressive growth as a goal, Bonners Ferry, Idaho-based Pro X Home Center will launch the Epicor Eagle N Series retail business management solution across its business. The idea is to improve inventory management, gain access to in-depth business analytics, streamline employee scheduling and expand the company’s online store.

Pro X Home Center is an independently owned member of Do it Best, stocked with products tailored for the surrounding community and an online catalog that features more than 67,000 items.

“Our business growth has shot through the roof over the last few years, which has been very exciting,” said Jeff Brubaker, owner of Pro X Home Center. “This growth has put us in a position for expansion, but in order to attain that expansion we needed a retail business management solution that could help get our business in order. Our previous point-of-sale system was holding us back, as it was not providing us with the information we required, specifically around inventory management and analytics. We are moving to the Epicor Eagle N Series solution because it will help deliver the results we need to support the company — including real-time data in our current location, which will be crucial for expansion into other areas — to make proactive decisions, and grow.”

Pro X Home Center has also selected the Epicor Scheduling solution to better equip the business with appropriate staffing levels.

“We decided to add the Epicor Scheduling+ tool for a couple of reasons,” said Susan Shope, general ledger manager of Pro X Home Center. “First, we were finding problems with our current timekeeping program. The information was not being transported correctly from the time clock device to the software management piece. In our old system, we were doing manual adjustments at the end of the month to add payroll into the system, so we were unable to tell how wages were affecting our bottom line, except at month end. Second, we liked the fact that it would be easy to see the sales volume in comparison to the labor force. We hope by using Epicor Scheduling+ software we will be able to more accurately predict the busy times, not only selling, but also other factors like stocking and inventory, and be better prepared with personnel.”

The longstanding relationship between Epicor and Do it Best Corp. gives hardware, lumber and building materials members that use the Eagle N Series solution seamless access to the cooperative information they need.

“Because of the easy access to the Do it Best catalog and vendor information within Eagle N Series software, we will no longer need to go back and forth between various programs. All the information we need will be available at the click of a button in one system,” said Brubaker.

With a successful and expanding online store, Pro X Home Center will also deploy the Epicor iNet eBusiness Suite. “Epicor iNet eBusiness Suite software was selected for future expansion we hope to make. We understand that many people do not use brick and mortar stores as much, and we want to capture a part of the population we may be missing. By allowing our customers to view not only everything we stock, but also items that we can special order, we will improve customer engagement and meet all of our customers known and unknown needs, wants, and wishes,” Shope said.

“As we implement Epicor iNet, our contractor customers will certainly appreciate the online access to account information,” Brubaker said. “With e-statements, e-invoices, and e-purchase orders, we will be able to easily and automatically email invoices, statements, and purchase orders to our vendors. I have no doubt this will save us time and money, as well as increase customer satisfaction since they will have quick access to the information they need.”

“Epicor Eagle N Series offers the industry-specific functionality our customers need to successfully and efficiently run a retail operation,” said Doug Smith, director, product marketing, retail and distribution, Epicor Software.