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Customer Background:
Acme Brick is one of the most trusted names in the building industry. Since 1891, Acme Brick has helped to add beauty and lasting value to homes. The company's commitment to excellence is evidenced through its 100-year limited guarantee to homebuyers. Acme Brick ensures that its bricks will endure subzero temperatures and blistering heat while remaining beautiful for at least 100 years.
Acme Brick is owned by the Berkshire Hathaway Group.
Business Need:
About two years ago, Acme Brick implemented a JD Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) application throughout its chain of retail stores. But the company found the ERP solution extremely difficult to use when processing simple sales transactions. The application's interface required a high level of technical expertise, making it cumbersome to use when performing basic sales transactions. Order entry of a transaction often took as long as 30 minutes, and many sales representatives reverted to hand writing tickets instead of negotiating the difficult interface in an attempt to provide faster customer service. The manual ticketing led to such problems as miscalculation of taxes, difficulties with tracking and problems with accounting. Acme Brick needed to somehow rework its JD Edwards application to make it easier to use.
Solution:
After attending a two-day seminar arranged by IBM, Acme Brick engaged IBM and IBM Business Partner Shared Vision Group to implement a new solution based on IBM WebSphere software. IBM and Shared Vision gained insight into the client's business and associated woes during the seminar, and they were subsequently able to apply that newfound knowledge and suggest a competitively priced business-to-business (B2B) WebSphere solution that would seamlessly integrate with the company's existing JD Edwards application to create an easy-to-use interface for point-of-sale (POS) transactions.
Acme Brick built its new user-friendly Web-based interface on IBM WebSphere Commerce Express V5.6 software. The application runs on IBM BladeCenter servers running the Microsoft Windows 2003 operating system at Acme Brick's headquarters. Each of the client's 67 retail outlet's POS terminals is linked to headquarters via a T1 line, helping to ensure a consistent and highly available connection. The company currently has more than 500 users for the application.
The new solution offers Acme Brick the following functionalities:
- The system integrates with credit card and check reader devices to handle payment information. Employees no longer have to type credit card information into the Web page since that data is automatically uploaded when customers swipe their credit cards.
- The new system's cash drawer reporting for end-of-day processing helps with bank deposits and accurate accounting.
- The client now has the ability to look up inventory by location in real time within the JD Edwards application.
- The system's ability to automatically retrieve credit information at the beginning of an order allows the client to easily identify customer accounts that have credit for an order or customer accounts that are in a hold status.
- The solution enables better inventory turns since the system automatically pulls inventory from lots that have the least quantity left, which helps to reduce the fragmenting of inventory.
- The system reserves inventory in real time within the JD Edwards application when an item is added to the order in Commerce.
- The system calculates prices and taxes in real time from the JD Edwards application based on the sold-to and ship-to addresses on the order, which ensures that customers always get the same price regardless of whether they call sales representatives or visit stores.
- The system integrates directly with a payment processor, allowing the client to bypass third parties such as VeriSign and Cybersource.
Benefits of the Solution:
Since implementing the WebSphere Commerce Express solution, Acme Brick has seen a reduction in transaction-processing times - dropping from as much as 30 minutes to less than 45 seconds. This improvement directly and dramatically increases customer satisfaction. And since the application is seamlessly integrated with a payment processor, the company saves nearly US$25,000 per year that it used to spend on third-party credit card processing fees. Overall, the IBM solution improves Acme Brick's ability to process sales, manage internal accounting and track inventory levels in real time.
The solution also demonstrates the robust nature of the IBM WebSphere Commerce software when used for POS transactions and not just as a front-end commerce engine.
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