Data is key to e-commerce success at Hein Electric Supply

The decision to go back to Phocas

The implementation of Infor’s BI product was also difficult, as Hein Electric Supply was one of the first deployments of the product with its VAR partner. The company spent four months getting the data flowing, and once connected, the information was missing critical fields. Running reports was also challenging, as there were no sorting mechanisms and reviewing data involved simply scrolling through a spreadsheet.

When we had made the data conversion changes, Phocas was a big part of the process,” said Stoming.

“When looking at e-commerce and how/which items to highlight on the company website, Phocas provides the data in a normalized fashion, quickly and easily, allowing us to make decisions on how and what to post. Infor’s product wasn’t anything like what we were used to, so we made the decision to go back.”

Hein Electric Supply went live with its Infor Cloud upgrade in August 2020 and brought back Phocas in March 2021.

Quick and easy redeployment of Phocas

Infor’s new cloud interface required some new API integration and data mapping with Phocas, but the implementation took only six weeks, with the last three weeks simply stress testing and making minor tweaks. Any concerns for data flowing through the Phocas API were allayed as Phocas’ team made the connections quickly, allowing data to flow sooner than anticipated.

I was surprised how quickly Phocas was able to get our APIs linked and data flowing,” said Stoming.  

“I was sitting back thinking, alright, we might be going through this for another three, four months. And after a couple weeks, there was data flowing. The implementation went much better than I expected.”

The beauty for our use of the Phocas product, is we’ve got 10-plus power users on it now, and whether they’re in inventory management, sales, purchasing, or e-commerce, the ability for people to point and click to put the data together the way they want on their own is highly productive and rewarding,” said Stoming.

We don’t need a separate person to assist in data analytics. Independent mid-size companies like us, need a competitive advantage, and a tool like Phocas, allows us to compete on the same level as larger, more sophisticated companies in a real-time, cost competitive way.” 

Phocas provides the flexibility to have multiple users to get the data the way they want, plus gives each department ownership in the process, ultimately leading to tangible results and success. Stoming added, “Rerunning and structuring reports is extremely easy, while with the dashboards, our users are one click away from getting a high-level metrics on company performance at any given point in time. We do quite a bit of baseline comparisons as it relates to customer sales/accounts receivable and inventory control performance from prior year. Setting those up in Phocas takes just a few clicks.”

Data key to e-commerce launch and success

With Phocas fully integrated, Stoming was able to stay on track with his B2B e-commerce plans. Stoming added, “I really wanted to use Phocas for our e commerce program and provide our e- commerce team with the data analytics. So, when they are analyzing how we’re going to have items in the store, we know which ones are most popular. Where are we at? Where’s the history with the products and how many of these are we selling? With Phocas, they have the data at their fingertips and can use it in a strategic fashion.”

Phocas is going to play a major role in helping the company understand how to rank items that are the most popular when Hein Electric Supply’s e-commerce initiative is introduced to its B2B customers. Giving customers the ability to find items quickly and easily will be critical to Hein Electric Supply’s e-commerce success, and Phocas is the solution that will provide the data and keep the company on track.

We have a high confidence level with the Phocas product, because it’s so easy to use, because it’s so intuitive, and because it’s so interactive,” said Stoming.

Once we build these things, when we’re starting to take next steps forward, we know we have Phocas in the background to get us what we need from a data perspective. When you have a confidence level in a solution, like all our users do with Phocas, they really like it and are comfortable with it; that speaks volumes as to the quality of the Phocas product and the team of people backing the product.”

Stoming added, “From the sales team to the implementation team, Phocas is an industry leader that when utilized strategically can make a difference in any particular company’s business.