With three locations in the northeastern U.S., Holt & Bugbee manufactures and distributes rough sawn planks, finish dimension planks and boards and custom finished and unfinished moldings. Their customer base is approximately 2,500 companies and in any given year, they will sell to about 1,500 of them. In order to give their customers the service they deserve, Holt & Bugbee needed an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that had lumber specific functionality and gave them speed and inventory accuracy. To achieve this, Holt & Bugbee turned to Agility, DMSi’s business accounting software.
In 2008, Holt & Bugbee implemented Agility, since then they have improved inventory accuracy because of the many lumber specific features. The end tally functionality tool, allows them to efficiently track hardwood unit tallies by the thickness, width and length of every board or by total board footage per length.
“We gravitated to Agility because of the inventory functionality, specifically being able to tally lumber”
Bill Robinson, Holt & Bugbee’s IT systems manager
Agility’s inventory functionality and accuracy made a big difference to the company, but it was what they could do with that information that really made an impact. By using Agility’s end tally tracking solutions, Holt & Bugbee found an easy and quick way to track lumber. The hand-held technology seamlessly brings critical lumber inventory information into Agility for tighter inventory control; from receiving to remanufacturing, all the way from raw green lumber to finished products.
“Most software out there doesn’t deal with the lumber aspects so well. We chose Agility for the inventory control, mobile processing, reporting and many other critical features”
Holt & Bugbee look to Agility not only for inventory accuracy through the end tally features, but improved customer service. “I definitely think there are some cost-savings from Agility that have helped us with the downturn,” Robinson states. “Right now, everything is about being able to turn faster. How fast can you ship and manufacture.
If you aren’t quick enough, customers will go to someone else – Agility has given us that speed advantage”
Agility has helped Holt & Bugbee automate processes. “It has cut a lot of time off processes and taken a lot of manual list implementations out,” Robinson said. “The ability to import and export Agility data to Excel is a fantastic tool. You can e-mail it back and forth to customers, vendors and employees and manipulate it. Someone who used to use a handwritten list can put it right into Excel, edit it and have it done in 5 minutes versus typing out a whole list.
“Technology is ever evolving, it never stops. You just have to go with the flow and get there. There is a lot of technology that DMSi keeps bringing out to the forefront.”