Customer Success Story: Display World Inc.

As this manufacturer of point-of-purchase displays continues its evolution into a full-service provider, it will rely on Epicor Vantage to lead the way. The company needed an integrated system with detailed quoting capabilities, enhanced scheduling and tracking, and comprehensive financial reporting.

“One of our key strengths in the marketplace is our total integration – providing a full range of services to our customers,” explains Sam Perry, general manager of Display World Inc., in Warren, Rhode Island. “In a similar way, it was the total integration of Vantage that influenced our decision to buy it.”

Display World designs and manufactures retail point-of-purchase displays for a variety of products, ranging from jewelry to shoes to bike helmets. The company has historically been vertically structured, building everything inside the factory’s four walls.

“Today we handle initial concept and design through testing, prototyping and final production,” explains Perry. “Our company’s growth depends on our ability to manage all these different processes and Vantage is a key part of that.”

Retail displays are becoming more sophisticated, no longer simply made of wood and plastic. Displays increasingly incorporate metal and electronic components; this growing complexity is one reason Display World is looking outside its four walls.

“We’ll operate more strategically, doing what we do best while working with companies that can perform other operations better and more economically,” Perry comments, adding that these partnerships will enable Display World to grow without adding brick and mortar.

All creative work will remain in-house, while certain manufacturing operations -- like metal plating – will be outsourced. The company recently created separate business units, including a creative department and mill shop.

“We’re going beyond selling tangible products to providing our expertise in whole spectrum of services, such as concept development and package design,” observes Perry. “Vantage will enable us to manage the subcontracting relationships and business units that expand our capabilities.”

Improving Efficiency

When Perry joined Display World initially -- first as a consultant -- the company was using Epicor Vista along with three other software packages. “We were still quoting manually and doing many financials outside of Vista,” he recalls.

More detailed quoting capabilities were needed, along with enhanced scheduling, tracking and financial reporting. Perry says they also wanted to give the sales department more tools to optimize their efforts.

Perry was familiar with Vantage, having worked as a consultant at several companies running it. After evaluating nearly 30 different software packages, he recommended that Display World purchase Vantage for two primary reasons – the minimal expected learning curve from Vista and how well Vantage’s capabilities meshed with their needs.

“As a small company, we have limited IT support so we needed a solution that was easy to implement and easy to run,” states Perry. “We wanted something intuitive like Vista.”

Display World purchased Vantage 5.2 in September 2002 and went live six months later. Three months after that, in June 2003, the company upgraded to 6.0 in a transition Perry describes as “seamless.”

After moving to Vantage, Perry says they saw efficiency increase by 20 to 25 percent. “We generated $1 million more in business from the same number of people.”

The core group of employees who were initially trained on Vantage also took the opportunity to standardize some of the company’s business processes. “We established expectations about certain operations,” recalls Perry. “These changes improved our business and helped make our task sets in Vantage more manageable.”

Managing Communication

Implementing Vantage also improved internal communication, which Perry says is a challenge regardless of a company’s size. “Vantage has helped our people become more aware of how all tasks and departments are interrelated,” he observes.

The Advanced Bill of Materials module has improved communication with the shop floor, including job updates and key data. “Many of our products are highly detailed, and Vantage makes it easy to share all the necessary information,” explains Perry. “Not everyone was tied in before.”

On the sales side, Display World expanded the scope of the CRM module to align the sales staff more closely with other departments.

“We considered Vantage to be ‘one big sales tool’ for our company,” declares Perry. “We wanted to know everything our salespeople were thinking.” Display World broadened the ‘salespeople work bench’ to include departments such as creative, design, project management, engineering and operations. Task sets now include all these people and detail the responsibilities required to complete each task.

Perry says the sales department is becoming more efficient thanks to Vantage, a savings he plans to quantify once more data is available. The company’s ongoing diversification into separate business units also means he has not yet calculated the overall cost savings from Vantage. “But I know Vantage is saving us money,” states Perry.

Before Vantage, quality assurance was handled manually, which was a time-consuming process prone to errors. With the Quality Assurance module, this function is smoothly integrated with RMA’s, inspections and supplier certifications.

For Display World, one of the attractions of Vantage 6.0 was the Dashboard, which management likes for its quick visual overview of critical parameters such as sales, profitability, efficiencies and financials. “The Dashboard will also help us transition to adding Vantage Business Intelligence later,” says Perry.

Future Plans

The total integration of Vantage is its greatest benefit, according to Perry. “Everyone in our company knows what’s going on with everyone else.” Display World’s customers will be added to the communications loop early in 2004, with the ability to log on to the company’s web site to check inventory levels or shipment status.

In the near future, Display World’s catalog will also go on-line, followed by on-line ordering capabilities using Vantage EDI. “Cutting the processing time for standard, generic-type orders will be a huge benefit,” says Perry, who adds that a number of Display World’s standard products could be easily built by customers and ordered through their web site using the Product Configuration module.

Perry says the recent economic downturn hurt Display World because the retail sector is dependent on consumer spending. “Our diversification has helped us stay ahead of the curve, but we’re growing more slowly than we would like,” he explains.

"We need to maintain our momentum and fortunately Vantage helps us do this,” concludes Perry. “Everyone at our company sees the positive benefits Vantage provides.”