Warshauer Electric Supply

The Company: About Warshauer Electric Supply

Warshauer Electric Supply is headquartered in New Jersey and is known for combining value-added electrical solutions with an unmatched level of expertise. They represent 130 associates distributed between five different in-state locations. Founded 65 years ago, the family-owned company offers extremely diverse offerings in the electrical wholesale space. They are known for occupying divisions from a lighting design center to generators sales and service, to switchgear.

The Situation: Technological Partner

Warshauer Electric Supply realized that they needed their company to remain relevant in the technological landscape. They couldn’t work alone anymore — they needed a technological partner. That’s when their search for a business management software company began. ​“The Epicor management team was very involved with me as we went through the process of determining who was the best vendor for us,” said the company’s CEO and President, James Warshauer. That’s one of the biggest reasons why they decided to make the decision of partnering with Epicor. ​“What you can do with this system is limitless,” Warshauer said. ​“It’s life-changing for our company — and very exciting.” Yet while the organization is moving towards the future, they’re not ready for the cloud just yet. For now, Warshauer Electric Supply is still hosting on their own hardware. ​“We’re going to go [on the cloud] in a few years, which is one of the reasons why we chose Epicor,” Warshauer said. ​“They’ve given us the option to go either way.”

Challenges

• Difficulty tracking tickets

• Repetitive menial tasks 

• No electronic warehouse

The Solution: Epicor Eclipse ERP

Before Epicor, printing product tickets took up 25% of a Washauer employee’s time. Now, adding a new item into the system is easy, and doesn’t require any work to be repeated. ​“We don’t price tickets, because the minute a customer signs it’s invoiced,” Jim Dunn, the company’s executive vice president, said. ​“The Epicor system also allows us to go in and fix any mistakes easily.” Now, the time that their staff was wasting on tracking tickets is now being spent following up on quotes and bids. ​“It had an immediate impact on our business,” Dunn said. At the same time, Epicor has given the company the ability to ramp up their eCommerce capabilities. This means giving customers the ability to look at invoices and statements online, as well as the proof of deliveries. Before Epicor, their team was constantly dealing with customers calling and asking for invoices and proof of delivery. ​“We were able to save 25% of our sales people’s time with not having to price tickets, and probably 50% of our A/R department’s time not having to supply people with this information,” Dunn said.

The Result: Epicor Eclipse ERP Implementation Benefits

One of the biggest selling points of having the Epicor system was that it would eliminate some repetitive job responsibilities at Warshauer. Now, some of the tedious responsibilities that happened over and over, like entering sales data into the system or manually inputting invoices, are left to the machines. These automated tasks left the team free to be more proactive and brainstorm how their job can make the company more effective. And things are just getting started. ​“We know there’s so much below the surface that we don’t know yet,” Dunn said. ​“We’re excited to explore below the surface and really find out the power of the Epicor system.”

Benefits

• Decreased sales time on paperwork by 25% 

• Reduced post-sale people time by 50% 

• Sped up invoicing process