Epicor Eclipse Software Helps F.D. Lawrence Electric Co. Modernize and Compete in the Electrical Distribution Market

Established in 1904, F.D. Lawrence Electric Co is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio and is known for combining the best electrical products with the top sales support. In the more than 110 years since they opened, they’ve grown to employ 100 workers in three different locations.

The company offers cost-saving design assistance while leveraging new and energy saving technology. Their mission is to help customers choose the most efficient options for their projects and support them every step of the way with more than a century of expertise.

Changing the game to compete

Before F.D. Lawrence partnered with Epicor, it was a challenge for them to meet increased demands from vendors and customers while electronically exchanging information. “We were lagging behind our major competitors,” said Daron Brown, a business analyst at the company. “We wanted to be ahead of the technology curve as the workforce changes.”

F.D. Lawrence needed to invest in technology as they focused on expanding their customer base, the products they sell, and the services they offer. After seeing presentations from a few potential providers, they decided to go with Epicor.

“Eclipse software allows us to analyze not only our customers, but also the products and services we sell into the markets where we compete” said Jamie Beckett, the company’s president. “It allows us to make more efficient, more accurate, data-driven decisions. In the past, that was not as easy to do.”

In addition, the Radio Frequency (RF) warehouse package has increased efficiency and made the company’s inventory tracking more accurate. “Epicor allows us to cut down on the follow up and mistakes time,” added Brown.

Incorporating analytics

Ever since F.D. Lawrence partnered with Epicor, data accuracy in general has improved. For example, they’ve been able to reduce their ticket overrides from somewhere north of 80% down to less than 20%. The increased accuracy of that database has been a big contributor to their higher operational efficiencies.

One of the biggest contributors to this change has been the Product Data Warehouse (PDW). This places all the company’s vendor product and pricing information at their fingertips, which means that all the information to make a product change is available within minutes.

“Now, we can use direct through stock,” said Brown. “Today, we can better manage and exceed challenging requests from our customers thanks to a solution inside of Eclipse software.”

Future forward

Historically, F.D. Lawrence has had a solid reputation with very strong capabilities in the lighting and gear space. But in the past five years, they have increased focus and invested in the commodities market. All the readily available data has made this transition much easier and more efficient. “We now have the tools to better understand the opportunities in the marketplace today as we continue to utilize the data to identify new opportunities to expand our customer base,” Beckett said.

Using Eclipse solution, they can easily drill down into the customer sales data to identify trends, new opportunities, and even lost opportunities. They are much more equipped to understand customer buying habits.

Before implementing Eclipse software, annual physical inventories were time consuming and not always accurate. Today, annual physical inventories have been replaced with daily cycle counting. Not only that, the inventory is more than 98% accurate in terms of both product counts and dollars invested. Inventory performance has also improved by being able to manage slow moving and dead inventory.

“Epicor meets all the needs of the business in one package, so we’re not forced to be in a situation where we’ve got a separate accounting, sales, and inventory software,” said Brown. “It’s all encompassing and manages all areas of our business,” he concluded.