Thermo King West Customer Success Story

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Learn How Thermo King West Improved their Margins with e-Emphasys

Thermo King West was founded 1999 and is one of the largest Thermo King dealerships in the country. They starting as an exclusive Thermo King dealership, providing temperature control products to trucks, trailers, busses, and rail cars, and have since expanded their equipment portfolio. The dealership has 9 locations across the United States, operating in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Maryland, Wyoming and Delaware.

Thermo King West

Headquartered: Tolleson, Arizona, US

Founded: 1999

Locations: 9 Locations in 6 States

Industries: Temperature Control Trucks, Trailers, Busses, Rail Cars

OEMs: Thermo King

Challenges

Thermo King West felt that their previous business system had not kept up with the rapid evolution of technology seen in the industry over the years. Prior to e-Emphasys, a large amount of work was done manually through spreadsheets or email, resulting in inefficiencies and silos of information. In addition, prior to e-Emphasys, back-order tracking was inefficiently done using a clip board. Jeff Riley, President, explains that “bringing e-Emphasys in number one got us caught up to where we were supposed to be, but more than anything, when we sat down and talked to these guys we realized that they were evolving with the industry, they were evolving with our business, and that was important because with as much change as we’ve seen in the last 5 or 10 years, we know that’s not going to end. We needed a partner that’s going to continue to develop new products to help support where our business goes in the future.”

Solutions

With e-Emphasys ERP, Thermo King West has seen increased automation of processes and benefitted from the real-time data and controls with e-Emphasys Business Intelligence. They have set up controls for parts pricing, labor pricing and costs, and multiple other scenarios, equipped with the data visibility from e-Emphasys. “Business intelligence from where it was at to where we’re at now is leaps and bounds improvement. The ability that we can interact with the report, drive the report with the criteria points that we’re looking for, and to measure the elements that we previously did not have access to,” says Andrew Dembroski, IT Director. CFO, Chad Perham explains, “It has allowed us to standardize all of our business processes and really just get data into the system and act on the data.” This allows management to have quick, streamlined access to business results for informed decision making.

In day-to-day operations, e-Emphasys has improved back-order processing, as the system links back orders to PO’s, allowing for faster processing once inventory comes in. Additionally, they have utilized the parts management tool to visualize and employ inventory from other locations. Managers can easily see metrics from single orders, or a high-level overview, aiding in enhancements to processes.

“Being able to call one of my parts managers and look at a high-level overview of different things, whether it be margin issues. Being able to drill down to specific orders where I see we could have increased margin, or where we fell short on providing the customer with the appropriate pricing has been huge for us,” said AJ Westfall, Parts Director.

Benefits & Results

A major benefit of e-Emphasys for Thermo King West is improved margins. According to CFO, Chad Perham, “one of the things that’s probably impacted our business more than anything from a revenue and financial results standpoint is just leveraging the system and their pricing models. Just controlling pricing in a more automated way and preventing or monitoring discounts we’ve improved margins by 5 points.” The real time data and business intelligence platform has aided in those decisions. Additionally, the time to time to completion to time to close has been reduced by half because of the e-Emphasys Digital Transformation Platform.

One of the things that’s probably impacted our business more than anything from a revenue and financial results standpoint is just leveraging the system and their pricing models. Just controlling pricing in a more automated way and preventing or monitoring discounts we’ve improved margins by 5 points.

- Chad Perham, CFO, Thermo King West

“It has definitely helped our days to close, from time to completion to time to invoice, so it’s been really big,” said Joey Sanford, VP of Western Operations. “We’ve cut that time in half. We’re at 5-7 days now where previously we were probably somewhere close to 14 days.”

The platform has also benefitted the company culture. “The fact that we can have this sophistication, the data, down to these people is helping us make decisions every single day. It’s also helping us to build a culture of how do we get better, here’s where we’re at, here’s our score, and how do we improve.” With customized access to data based on role, every employee has real-time access to the most important tasks and metrics to them, driving better results.