"The JJ Koepsell Company Customer Software actually began to be planned almost immediately upon my arrival at the company in 2002," said Kelly Martens, manager of information systems.

The way the company's previous pricing service worked was to manually download a price file for each customer and import it into a Microsoft Access database. It would then be placed on a floppy disk, which was handed to the customer, generally by the salesman. A series of Web pages served by the old Windows 98 Web server utility, Personal Web Server, would be used to retrieve data from the Access database and give the customer the price for the item obtained in their search.

The ultimate fatal blow to this service was the fact that Microsoft stopped supporting the Personal Web Server technology. But there were also some major drawbacks, noted Martens, both for the distributor and the contractor:

1. Price updates were inconsistently sent out. "Since there was no system in place, contractors were left to guess if the pricing they had was anywhere near accurate," he said.

2. Contractors were building quotes based on these prices. "If a commodity item such as copper - which fluctuates greatly - had gone up significantly, the contractor had no way of knowing this and this would then be reflected in any quote they passed to their customers," remarked Martens. "Obviously, this caused problems later on when invoicing occurred."

3. From the distributor's point of view, handing out the entire price file on a disk that had no security attached to it, and no control over where or who the data went to after it left JJ Koepsell was troublesome. "Pricing is a distributor's lifeblood and handing it out with no controls whatsoever was, in my estimation, unacceptable," he said.

Writing of the code for Version 1.0 of the Customer Software began in February 2003.

"This version was pretty much designed to allow me to get to know our customers and what they wanted," commented Martens. "I did not have a road map to guide me in this, as the idea of a distribution house distributing their own software had not been tried before. Learning what the customer wanted was priority one and that was what Version 1.0 was all about."

This initial software served the purpose of getting contractor customers used to an Internet-based system for pricing information. Martens would compile a pricing file and post an update every 24 hours, a significant advantage over the previous approach. But there was a transition period as people got accustomed to the new system.

"When the software was released, those that had been in the contracting business for many years did not want too much to do with it," Martens said. "It is human nature to resist change, but I was confident after seeing the initial test results come back that we were on to something and, given time, it would grow on people.

"Ironically, the software's biggest supporters today are those that didn't care for the software initially, both within my own company and the contractors."

Martens related that one of the best-received new features was keyword search ability, which enabled those who were not well-versed in the industry, such as office personnel, to quickly locate items and get them priced or ordered.

Also, he said, "My boss was happy because customers could now only get one price at a time, which made our pricing much more secure than it had been on the floppy disks."

Shown is the main screen of the JJ Koepsell Company Customer Software. Enhancements in Version 3.0 include networkability, improved reporting, program/keyword database updates in the background, an interactive message center, and the ability to build multiple orders at one time.

On To Real-Time Pricing

Version 2.0 was released in September of 2003. This version offered real-time pricing and stock status. "We also included a ‘Favorites' section of the program which allowed the user to mark items as ‘favorites' so they would not have to hunt for them again," he commented. "We allowed them to categorize them on their own, which the contractors really liked, as no two contractors ever agree completely on how things should be done."

In the later releases of this version, real-time order entry was initiated.

The addition of these new features was a major advancement that was very well received. "Contractors love the idea of real-time pricing, stock status, and order entry," Martens stated. Customer feedback noted that it's "an immense time saver" since contractors don't have to spend a lot of their day on the phone or at the distributor's counter, and "they could order in confidence knowing the stock would be there," he added.

"Real-time order entry has changed the way many contractors do business, because now they can submit their orders overnight and, when the counter personnel come in the next morning, the pick tickets have printed and only need to be filled. It is so far from where we were in 2002 it is kind of unbelievable."

Some contractors, naturally, needed some time to adjust to real-time order entry, but once they did, they "saw the advantage it gave them as opposed to waiting for a fax to be processed or handing the order to a salesman," said Martens. "In addition, we added functionality that allowed the customer to include special order items." It helped the distributor as well because "we find out what customers want that we are not carrying."

As far as reporting capabilities, a prime benefit of the software is that it allows customers to research transactions going back three years for a single item, or using a search term such as the P.O. number, ticket number, or any part of the item number. Customers can also further break down their searches into specific types of transactions, such as searching a line for credits received.

The software also provides an open order report that allows the contractor to view outstanding orders that have yet to be filled by the distributor, both on an individual item and all open orders as a group. "This report is perhaps the most well received both within JJ Koepsell and the contractors," said Martens. In addition, account status information is provided.

“Real-time order entry has changed the way many contractors do business, because now they can submit their orders overnight and, when the counter personnel come in the next morning, the pick tickets have printed and only need to be filled,” said Kelly Martens, manager of information systems for JJ Koepsell Company. Shown is the order entry screen.

An Unexpected Change

"Before I had known about this, I had begun the process of putting together Version 3.0 of the software, which was an extensive rewrite of Version 2.0," he said. "Because I was in the middle of the rewrite when I found out, it didn't make sense for me to go backwards and take out the changes" in order to make the accommodation with the accounting software upgrade easier. He started quickly writing code for the concepts of 3.0 that would integrate with the upgrade.

At the end of January 2004, JJ Koepsell made the accounting upgrade. "The code to integrate with the upgrade of our accounting package was actually pretty accurate, but there were enough inaccuracies that I could not leave it as is," Martens stated. He had to put in long hours getting all the previous functions back to normal, as well as hunting for and fixing bugs within the new code.

By the beginning of March, all the new functions of Version 3.0 were ready. "It was a year before I had really wanted to release it, but it all ended up working out okay," he said.

Some of the enhancements are: