Modernizing 130 years of success at Eddy Group with Phocas

For 130 years, Eddy Group has been a trusted wholesaler distributor for construction, HVAC, plumbing and electrical customers. It continues to be a family owned and operated business that has won numerous awards for leadership and service.

From its founding days operating a sawmill for local builders in Bathurst to now running 11 locations in the Maritime provinces of Canada, the company has prospered by adapting to the changing needs of its customers. In the current competitive landscape of the mid-market, keeping customers relies on ongoing modernization which requires visibility of accurate performance data.

Krystyna LeBlanc, the CIO and Director of eCommerce and Marketing at Eddy Group advised the specific challenge that the business was running into was easy access to information.

Klipboard + Phocas allows everyone to use accurate data  

The solution for Eddy Group was to integrate Phocas Analytics and Budgets & Forecasts to its Klipboard ERP so everyone from purchasing to sales would know how they were tracking in real time. Databases set up in Phocas include accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, purchasing and sales.

“What people had to do before Phocas was request IT to write queries to pull out any reports and much of the query writing fell to me. This took a lot of time and effort to give our salespeople the information they needed to be prepared for customer visits,” says Krystyna.

“To be able to access our information with so few clicks and without needing to know what file I'm looking for has changed my day drastically.

“Phocas is very intuitive. All types of information about products and customers is available to everyone at any point in time,” adds Krystyna.

Custom-built dashboards to suit individual sales people

Dashboards are now created to suit how people like to see their performance data or manage their accounts. This includes adding widgets for custom metrics or specific products aligned to customers with pricing and margins.

“Phocas has been a real game changer, so we are excited about its further potential,” says Krystyna.

Within the first few weeks of using Phocas, we had a simple thing where a sales person’s margin was a negative number. Everyone assumed right away that there is a mistake with the reporting.

This old thinking is changing because Phocas makes it so easy to find the problem.

“We were able to instantly look up the transactions that made up that number and see where a mistake was made on order entry and we recover from there. And we found that within minutes.” says Krystyna.

Customer insights will help Eddy stay strong in the marketplace  

The team has started playing around with Phocas AI. Our sales manager was blown away with what he could find and how quickly and easily he could find that information with a few simple prompts typed in.

“I think the most pressing challenges we're facing is to serve our customers to the best of our ability as well as anticipate their needs. It's software like Phocas and easy access to information that is going to bring us to that next level and help us achieve that,” reinforces Krystyna.

“Phocas makes me feel like an expert with our data. When anyone reaches out and needs anything, it’s great to be able to come back with a response. I am confident that the information is accurate because that data is in our system and it's our source of truth. That’s powerful,” says Krystyna.