How Preferred Office Technologies Boosted Service Productivity Using e-automate and FMAudit

For Stephanie Whitehead at Preferred Office Products in Fort Smith, Arkansas, e-automate has made daily operations easier to manage.

Whitehead has more than 30 years of experience with business systems. Since Preferred adopted e-automate in 2013, the company has gained more control over its service department, maintenance agreements and meter collections.

Preferred began as an A.B. Dick dealership in 1968. It sold spirit duplicators, mimeographs, printing presses and related supplies. The company soon expanded into office equipment, office supplies and office furniture.

Today, Preferred provides business systems, document management, network services and managed print services across Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma. Its specialists sell and service equipment from Canon®, Ricoh® and Xerox®.

To keep up with a competitive market, Whitehead and her team rely on software that helps them manage daily operations and support growth. That’s where e-automate comes in.

The benefits extend beyond service calls. With e-automate, Whitehead and her team can see equipment and parts inventory across the business in real time.

That includes stock at the Fort Smith headquarters, the Fayetteville branch and in technicians’ vehicles. Instead of checking each location separately, the team has one view of available inventory.

Before switching to e-automate, the Preferred team counted inventory separately at each location.

“If something was in the Fayetteville store versus Fort Smith, and you would go to count it in Fort Smith it wouldn’t show up,” she remembers.

Annual inventory counts are also easier to complete. Before e-automate, reconciling inventory could take up to a week. Now, the Fort Smith location finishes in one day, while the Fayetteville office finishes in half a day.

About a year after adopting e-automate, Preferred added FMAudit® managed services software from ECI. This helped the company reduce the time and work needed to collect meter readings.

Before FMAudit, staff had to contact customers for readings. The process took time and often delayed billing.

“We would email customers a reminder at the beginning of the month, and if we didn’t hear back we would get on the phone and start calling,” recalls Whitehead.

As the installed equipment base grew from 1,400 to 2,500 machines, FMAudit helped the meter collection team handle the increased workload with fewer staff. Before the switch, two employees made meter collection calls each month. After the switch, only one person was needed, even with more machines to monitor.

FMAudit also tracks meter readings automatically, and orders replacements when needed, reducing manual work for the team.

Together, e-automate and FMAudit have helped Preferred manage service calls, track inventory and simplify meter collection. Technicians can complete more calls, annual inventory takes less time and fewer employees are needed to collect meter readings.

These improvements give Preferred a stronger foundation for managing daily operations as the business grows.