Arizona dealer embraces e-technology

E!FFICIENCY and productivity are -U./two words Julie Buchkowski understands. She has actively sought out ways to rid her business of time consuming processes and manual tasks, adopting new technologies along the way in order to streamline and achieve her goals. At the same time she has managed to put smiles on the faces of her best customers, and her emplovees too.

"Our customers were able to log in and pull down their own lost invoices, even when we were not open. They loved it."

Buchkowski is vice president of Paul's Ace Hardware stores. Founded by Paul Dauwalder in 1956, Paul's Ace Hardware started as a single location, 1,000-sq. ft. hardware store in Scottsdale, Az. Today that location has grown to a thriving full-service hardware business. In 1973, a second Arizona location was opened in Fountain Hills, and in the early 1990s they acquired a third location in Tempe, later turning that location into a full-service lumberyard.

A few years back, Buchkowski evaluated the business and spotted some glaring areas of inefficiency. One of them was the process used to manually file invoices, and then gather them by account to manually send out with the 1,500 monthly statements. "This was a very time intensive process," she said.

She started phasing out their routine of sending invoice copies to each account, and today sends invoices to about one-quarter of her accounts.

This saves a great deal of time each month, something Buchkowski is very happy about.

There was one problem, though. "Many of our contractor accounts send 'runners' to pick-up supplies. More often than not, they lose their copy of the invoice, and never deliver it back to their office," Buchkowski explained. "After our statements went out each month, my bookkeeper would spend the next seven days faxing invoice copies to bookkeepers as they phoned us, needing to get additional copies of those lost invoices."

Not very efficient. To solve this dilemma, Buchkowski implemented a new process in the fall of200l. Paul's Ace Hardware started offering their charge customers online access to their accounts. Using CcrTzueo's iNet Accounts On-Line technology, which allowed their Triad Eagle computer system to work with the Internet, they set up a number of their accounts with a Web-based log-in. That allowed customers access to their account via www.paulsacehardware.com.

"Our customers were able to log-in and to pull down their own lost invoices, even when we were not open. They loved it, and we saved hours of time we used to spend manually looking up invoices," said Buchkowski. "The number of post-statement phone calls requesting invoice copies dropped from 20 to 30 a day down to four or five a day. My bookkeeper is ecstatic !"

Buchkowski found out that her bookkeeper was not the only one who loved the new technology. "My outside salesperson found our online iNet services to be a great competitive edge. Online account access not only saved us hours of time, we gained additional business by staying a step ahead of our competitors," she said.

Their customers loved it too.

Buchkowski explained, "At first we assigned a log-in to just a few of our key accounts. The demand grew to where we set up all of our accounts with a user name and a password for logging in. That way, when a customer called about our online services, we could instantly instruct them how to get online to access their account."

Having found early and quick success with their online service offerings, Paul's Ace Hardware is introducing two brand new services, eStatements and e-Invoices.

Buchkowski's computer system partner. CcrTnrao. announced these new technologies just a couple months ago, and Paul's Ace Hardware was one of the first in line to implement them.

"While we have made a lot of progress in terms of reducing manual tasks, the process of printing, stuffing and mailing statements is still a time

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