United Lumber United Truss

April 28, 2016 Uncategorized

Our company has three lumberyards that our component plant services. Our service area is central Ontario with currently 16 different outside sales representatives. Component sales are just one aspect of United Lumber Building Centers, but a significant profit center and sales enhancer that United has embraced for many years. As we grew we started seeing a problem, which was how do we grow our business without increasing our operating cost? Doing the same things by adding more man-hours (people) was increasingly becoming a problem.

The sales teams of the different lumberyards were fighting over the limited resources of our component manufacturing (CM). Every CM has limited capacity, even after investing tens of thousands of dollars in new equipment, people, and new buildings. The phone calls for scheduling became an ever increasing game of who and what was the daily priority, causing untold headaches with our CM people and also the actual manufacturing. Customer service was starting to be negatively affected and we were spending far too much time chasing critical information.

We were using a very common truss management application for our communication needs and found that there was a lot more to communications than just pricing and scheduling. We took a chance and invested the time and effort to implement AppWright.

The AppWright app is a web based communication software that is capable of scheduling, files storage, email, task tracking, automated reminders and much more. In essence, once we actually started fully embracing and using it, it became a labor saving, time enhancer and something that every salesperson would only let go if you pried from their dead hands. What a difference it has made!

AppWright’s service and support have been stellar and we have been very pleased. The project processing and task tracking is all customized for our unique needs. Everything we had asked for has been delivered. When something needed tweaking or a fix, it was done right away.

Working with both truss applications and AppWright has been a non-issue for our designers and everyone else. We use the truss management application for costing only. Everything else is being done through the AppWright app. None of the common truss engineering management applications have anything to supplant AppWright as the communications platform of choice.

This biggest advantage is helping our sales team spend more time making more sales and maintaining great customer service. Most of the time-consuming phone calls, email game of tag and other time wasters have all but been eliminated. We have salespeople who are working weekends, nights or go on vacation in Europe and yet are still able to monitor the progress of their sales via the AppWright web browser. Everything they need is always just a few mouse clicks away. Also, automated reminders help everyone stay on track with project processing task and scheduling. They love it.

If you want something that can actually enhance the productivity of all your staff, including the sales team, I highly recommend AppWright. Compared to the cost of new equipment, this has been a true bargain.

Ed DeBiasioPres./OwnerUnited Lumber United Truss