IPD Uses InOrder to Keep Volvo Owners the World Over Happy
Celebrating their 50th year of business, IPD has been selling Volvo parts, accessories and performance products since 1963. With a parts inventory totaling over $800,000, IPD ships from its Portland, Oregon warehouse to Volvo owners and enthusiasts the world over.
IPD actually started down the ERP implementation road with another company only to discover that the program wouldn’t work. According to Kevin Rutledge, System Admin and Programmer for IPD, the program design had too many problems (as did the software company’s mentality). “They just didn’t understand our market and processes. The software was geared toward a manufacturing environment and we could see that it would work quite well in that arena but not the retail sales arena.”
The IPD auto parts business has unique needs that aren’t addressed completely with any ERP type application. Says Kevin, “It’s not like selling iPods or clothing. We warehouse stuff differently, we market our stuff differently, we purchase differently, etc. Heck even our customers behave differently.”
Several people at IPD had pushed for in-house development (or out-of-house development managed by in-house personnel) but decision was made not to go that route for various reasons, including time, cost and the potential that key employees could leave the company at any time.
IPD chose InOrder based on the company’s list of requirements and a review of software demonstrations. Kevin is quite candid about the selection process: “InOrder didn’t look perfect but the basics looked better than some of the other similar priced applications. Price was an important factor too.”
When asked how InOrder has helped IPD, Kevin says, “The biggest gain we’ve had from InOrder is the open Microsoft SQL database. Being able to access our data was our main goal.
“Our website is a completely separate application from InOrder. I’ve written various scripts that sync data between the two and it’s working pretty well for us. Our labor costs are down for order processing since we don’t have to manually key web orders any longer.”
Kevin adds, “The one thing we do appreciate about Morse Data is their attention to us. We’re a ‘special needs customer’ with seemingly constant issues. The customer support people at Morse do a great job of tracking down the weird and complex issues we have, determining the cause and then resolving them. We’re definitely impressed.”
To read more about IPD and how InOrder is helping them maintain inventory in real time, download the case study.
And, if you’re an auto parts company – or any company that sells online or through multiple channels, and your existing business software isn’t working for you, give us a call.
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