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Success Story
Buffalo Business Products: Using Britannia as a Foundation to Build a Business Turnaround
Buffalo Business Products offers a wide selection
of office products.
- Dealership:
- Buffalo Business Products
- Industry:
- Office Furniture
- Technology
- Maintenance & Break Room Supplies
- Office Supplies
- Technology
- Years in Business:
- 2
- Buffalo Business Products Uses:
Software for growing office dealers
Business intelligence integrated with ECi software
In May 2008, Bill Martin was a dealer with a problem. An industry veteran with over 30 years’ experience, he had been brought in to Sav-On Office Supplies, a retail-oriented operation with multiple stores throughout the Southwest. His task was to turn around a troubled organization that had little real sense of business direction and even less profitability. Despite his best efforts, it just wasn’t working.
Yielding to the inevitable, Bill shut Sav-On down, took seven locations in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico that were running as commercial operations, and rebranded them under the Buffalo Office Products name.
I needed a system that could handle the commercial side of the business, deal with multiple inventories and get us out of the IT business through use of a hosted system.
It was a challenging time by any measure, made even worse by the fact that the new dealership was still being run on the original Sav-On computer system. That system was a home-grown product that was distinctly user-unfriendly and designed primarily to support retail stores.
“I needed a system that could handle the commercial side of the business, deal with multiple inventories and get us out of the IT business through use of a hosted system,” he explains. “Britannia was the ideal solution.”
Little more than six months after launching the new Buffalo Business Products, Bill and his team made the switch.
It was a situation full of potential for disaster. The Buffalo team in the branch locations had little technical expertise themselves and their top priority was figuring how to adapt to a new business model for the company as a whole. Throwing a brand new computer system in their laps could have meant total chaos. Thankfully, it didn’t.
It was probably the smoothest transition involving a new computer system that I’ve gone through in my 30 years in this industry.
“It was probably the smoothest transition involving a new computer system that I’ve gone through in my 30 years in this industry,” Bill recalls. “We brought all the branches up almost immediately with no glitches and at the same time, we were able to cut our IT staff down from three to just one. And while Britannia had the look and feel of our old operating system, it had so much more horse power.”
And as Bill and his team implemented their new, commercial dealer business model, they found the resources the Britannia system provided gave the company a whole lot more.
“Looking back on the past two years, I don’t think we could have made the move to a commercial model without the Britannia system,” says Bill. “It really put the structure in place for the business—everything, from products to contract and non-contract pricing—and allowed me to focus on managing the company and building a cohesive organization that is focused on growing sales and margin.”
(Customers) like the way Britannia handles features like Favorites Lists and generally find the system very easy to use.
The Britannia system has also played well with the most important constituency involved in the Buffalo story over the past two years—its customers. After implementing the Britannia E-commerce online ordering system, the dealership’s online sales went from zero to 32% of total volume and growing. “We find our customers do very well ordering online through Britannia,” reports Bill. “They like the way Britannia handles features like Favorites Lists and generally find the system very easy to use.”
Another big plus, Bill says, is the way his team has been able to add the Acsellerate sales intelligence program to its arsenal of management resources. “That’s another area where Britannia really shines,” he says. “It integrates seamlessly with Acsellerate and that has allowed us to identify new areas of opportunity and be proactive about maximizing the value of each customer and selling them the full breadth of product we have to offer.”
In many ways, of course, the past two years have hardly been an ideal time to launch any kind of new business. But there again, Britannia has proved its worth on multiple fronts.
We’re planning on implementing the new Britannia Version 5 system later this year and once that is in place, the benefits from Britannia are only going to get bigger and better!
“We live in an uncertain economy these days, and Britannia helps us work through all those challenges and continue to thrive,” Bill says. “It allows us to manage pricing and margins and be proactive with our customers. We’re planning on implementing the new Britannia Version 5 system later this year and once that is in place, the benefits from Britannia are only going to get bigger and better!”
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