Modern Equipment Dealer Management Software
e-Emphasys Technologies has spent the last 20 years with a specific goal in mind: providing modern, cutting-edge enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions to equipment dealers and rental companies.
e-Emphasys is a global industry enterprise solution provider with customers in over 20 countries, providing a fully integrated, end-to-end ERP solution to optimize efficiency and drive revenue. Along with their core ERP product, e-Emphasys also provides other enterprise solutions such as Business Intelligence and Reporting, Mobile Field Service Apps and CRM systems which can be integrated into their ERP or any business system.
“We combine decades of experience in the equipment industry with the powers of modern technology, allowing us to bring what we believe is the lowest Total Cost of Ownership and highest Return on Investment to our customers when compared to other solutions on the market,” said Milind Bagade, CEO of e-Emphasys. “We take great pride in the business benefits consistently reported by our customers.”
In today’s world, ERP software is a vital part of the most successful and profitable companies. When e-Emphasys was founded in 2000, equipment dealers were using outdated legacy technology to manage their businesses. The limited functionality offered by these systems meant that equipment dealers were forced to use multiple software solutions, resulting in islands of information within the company.
“Our legacy business system was a major impediment,” said John Coughlin, president of Linder Machinery. “We had no option but to follow the process defined in the software. e-Emphasys was a paradigm shift for us. Built-in best practices helped us immensely to drive efficiency at every level of our operation.”
Proven Success
Working in collaboration with dealers, e-Emphasys invested 13 years and over 3,000 man-years of development into creating an ERP platform specifically for the equipment distribution industry. The platform that has been developed works on any database, device or browser, meaning that it can be a future-proof solution that is continually enhanced to meet the needs of the customer.
“e-Emphasys has a proven history of on-time and on-budget implementations,” said Nick Orolin, President of e-Emphasys. “Over the years we’ve developed a repository of 350+ Industry Best Processes which is built in to the solution. This helps us to provide a quick implementation time and return on investment for our customers.”
The driving force behind e-Emphasys’ implementations is their business process mapping tool, which is integrated into the ERP system with over 350 predefined processes. This helps to promote a learning organization and shortens training time. It also helps management to tighten controls and establish industry best practices across the entire organization, ensuring plans made in the boardroom are carried out on the shop floor.
“e-Emphasys enabled us to get our implementation done on time and on budget. This is critical because it allowed us to experience ROI quickly,” said Peggy Smith, CFO of Linder Machinery. “e-Emphasys provided a ready-made best business practices framework which we were able to customize to meet our own needs. We understand that some systems take as long as 12 to 30 months to implement. In comparison, our implementation of e- Emphasys ERP took only four months.”
e- Emphasys’ research and development (R&D) team of approximately 280 people is structured like a dealership, with separate departments for rental, parts, service, whole goods, integration, and finance/accounting. Through this structure, they have been able to fine-tune their solutions to meet the needs of each area of the dealership.
Real-Time, User Friendly Dashboards
Features such as their operational dashboards with real-time alerts have helped to increase productivity. These dashboards can be personalized by role or by user. Dashboards show the activities and pending work each day. For example, a rental manager would log on and see pending deliveries for the day or demo equipment overdue for return. These dashboards also allow management to track key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time from any device.
“e-Emphasys has changed the way we do business in a number of ways,” said John Kimball, president of Kimball Equipment. “I use the business intelligence dashboards every day. It’s a refreshing change from the past, where I would generally ask once or twice a month how things were going. One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning is look at my phone and see what we billed the previous day. I can look at KPIs for different locations, I can use the system to see reports.”
Peggy Smith of Linder Machinery was impressed with the increases in productivity after switching to e-Emphasys.
“We have the ability for our managers to get a level of data that was not available before. They can drill down to detailed information from reports in just a few mouse clicks. This ability should greatly enhance our productivity and profitability,” said Smith. “With e-Emphasys ERP we are finding that our KPIs are available daily instead of monthly. This greatly improves management’s ability to impact operations.”
Field Service Solutions
Customers have reported significant benefits in areas such as service. e-Emphasys provides fully integrated mobile field service solutions designed to enhance the efficiency and profitability of technicians. Scheduling and dispatch capabilities allow service managers to dispatch technicians based on skills, availability and proximity to the job site. The mobile app provides technicians capabilities such as GPS navigation, complete customer information and job description, voice-to-text capabilities for taking notes, the ability to capture signatures in the field and more.
“I would say our revenue, particularly in service, has increased 30 percent this year,” said Brian Loderhose, vice president of the G.W. Van Keppel Company. “One of the areas that has helped us tremendously is the eService Tech. Being able to manage that day-by-day without paper has improved that process greatly. To go from a paper system of manual write-ups, of tracking time, of putting hours on a piece of paper and turning it in – now with e-Emphasys our efficiency has gone up tremendously.”
Technician Efficiency
General Equipment and Supplies has seen a massive reduction in technician time spent doing paperwork. “Pre e-Emphasys, our technicians were spending hours and hours on their paperwork every day,” said Steve Stafki, vice president of service at General Equipment and Supplies. “Post e-Emphasys, they’re spending approximately 15 to 30 minutes a day getting all their paperwork done.”
Many equipment dealers report that they spend a significant amount of time and money searching for documents, parts and more. To solve these problems, e-Emphasys has developed advanced document management capabilities which are integrated directly into the system. An example of this is the ability to attach pictures, contracts, invoices and more to relevant transactions so that all required information is easily accessible in one location, thus automating work that was previously done manually.
“e-Emphasys has cut our service administration expense by at least 50 percent,” said Jon Kimball of Kimball Equipment. “I would say the reduction in time with e-Emphasys in generating financials is 70 percent or greater. Things that used to take two departments several days going back and forth now take, in some cases, 10 to 20 seconds.”
Rick Krause, CFO of the G.W. Van Keppel Company, was able to eliminate some administrative processes entirely. “Using the e-Emphasys ERP system has allowed us to be more efficient in our administration,” said Krause. “A good example is using the Avalara sales tax information which has allowed us to eliminate 100 percent of the work we were previously doing.”
Scott-Macon Equipment has experienced growth in recent years, but has not had to add to their administrative force. “We’ve saved so much time with the eScheduler app, inter-company transactions and so forth that despite our growth we haven’t had to add anyone to our accounting department,” said William French, vice president and controller of Scott-Macon Equipment.
Rental Department Optimization
For rental departments, speed is essential. e-Emphasys’ solution allows users to scan RFIDs and immediately generate a service work order directly in the system. The service manager is notified of the work order via text or email so that he can assign it to a technician using scheduling capabilities. Once that technician has completed the job, the job can be updated to show that the equipment is ready to rent again. This allows sales staff to have an accurate view of the equipment available to rent in real time, minimizing equipment downtime and maximizing rental revenue.
With workforces becoming more and more mobile, e-Emphasys has made significant efforts to ensure that all the features of their software are available on any device, in the office or in the field. The IoT (Internet of Things) and (AI) artificial intelligence are already integral parts of the world today and will only play a larger role in the years to come. e-Emphasys has started developing solutions using these advances in technology – for example, in preventative maintenance. e-Emphasys currently has a pilot program in place with one of their customers in which they integrate AI with a knowledge base to proactively identify potential machine failure. Resources are then automatically allocated to resolve the problem before the machine fails. This is just one example of AI and IoT impacting the equipment industry in the coming years.
“e-Emphasys has a proven track record of customer success and takes pride in each and every customer relationship,” said Bagade. “Our customers consistently report significant ROI, and many are growing and acquiring companies. We strive to provide the premier dealer management solution for this industry, both now and in the future.”
To learn more about what e-Emphasys can do for your dealership, click here!
