PSS Industrial Group leverage Phocas for real-time conversations across its supply chain

“Our favourite metric to track with Phocas is OTIF – on time in full,” says Melanie Baker, Director of Supply Chain at PSS Industrial Group.

The company loves this metric for many reasons, most notably because it measures PSS’s vision of ‘delivering what you need, when you need it.’ With hundreds of thousands of products in circulation, the ability to measure delivery performance at this scale and on a dashboard is extremely valuable. And Phocas makes it possible.

PSS Industrial Group (PSSI) is a leading products distributor and manufacturer of specialty equipment for all sections of the oil and gas energy market. The product offerings are extensive and include industrial and pipeline products, rentals, repairs, PVF (pipe, valve and fittings) and maintenance and operational solutions.

Phocas provides hourly productivity management analysis of warehouse logistics

At a recent industrial supply event, we spoke to the Director of Supply Chain, Melanie Baker. She was instrumental in integrating Phocas Analytics to the company’s Infor CSX ERP about 4 years ago. PSS Industrial has set up databases for purchasing, sales, inventory and total warehouse logistics (TWL), a module within the Infor ERP system that tracks goods internally upon receipt within their Distribution Center. Phocas allows for real time hourly productivity management, something PSS needed visibility into.

PSS Industrial Group manages a constant flow of inventory, orders and supplier activity across 30 locations and online. The challenge wasn’t the lack of data but the difficulty of accessing and using it effectively across their teams and brands. They wanted an analytics tool that was straightforward and practical for everyone to use.

Melanie advised she was looking for a solution that wasn’t the typical Power BI. PSSI need software that is easy to manoeuvre and one that their people don’t need extensive training to operate.

“Phocas is an everyday tool that is intuitive and allows us to adapt very quickly,” says Melanie.

The vendor and supplier partnerships are extremely important to the business as the products they supply help to attract and keep their customers. Having access to over 700,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) from thousands of vendors makes PSS Industrial a valuable part of customer’s supply chains.

Phocas analysis is shared openly with supplier partners

To keep the relationships strong and transparent, PSSI shares analysis of the supply chain with suppliers in Phocas. The information helps to improve category performance and reduce waste.

“I sit down with a supplier partner and show them in black and white how they are performing. We look at Phocas dashboards and KPIs,” says Melanie.

Rather than running a report and sending it to them, we look at results live on screens in the office.

“Our suppliers are just as impressed as me at how nimble and easy it is to get the data from Infor with Phocas,” adds Melanie.

Phocas helps to validate rebates in real-time

Melanie says the most value she obtains from Phocas is in rebate management validation.

“While we have other mechanisms for forecasting and tracking qualified rebates, we utilize Phocas to validate those numbers as accurate and correct for our Accounting Team. This ensures appropriate accruals are applied.”

“Being able to pull validated and qualified rebate spend really easily and on demand is the biggest opportunity for me,” adds Melanie.

“Then for the buyers in the company, it is about day-day conversion opportunities and utilizing Phocas to build side by side trend comparisons, supplier cost comparisons, and targets to ensure we are maximizing our Rebates, especially in the AD (Affiliated Distributors) program.”

“This is really powerful information that they can take to the vendors, in a format they understand and together decide on a way forward,” says Melanie.

PSSI have started using Phocas AI within the sales team with a goal of getting quick answers and to familiarize new team members with the potential of the software.

“For instance, team members can simply type natural-language questions. For example they might want to know, 'What suppliers offer item X with the same form and fit?' or 'Which top 10 products from supplier Y share common XX-type features?' and they instantly receive relevant results,” says Melanie.

“Our users don’t need to manually drill into menus or reports. The more we use the system, the more it learns and anticipates our needs, becoming increasingly intuitive over time. From the standpoint of using Phocas beyond the purchasing department, Phocas AI has helped us see more benefits in other departments,” says Melanie.

Through technology like Phocas and with a strong focus on their defined vision, the PSS Industrial team continue to maximize financial returns for their suppliers and customers.