Kenco Toyota-Lift
"Just two months after going live WennSoft saved Kenco more than $100,000 in payroll costs."
Jeff Burns
General Manager, Kenco Yoyota-Lift
About Kenco Toyota-Lift
Kenco Toyota-Lift offers sales, service, parts, and rentals to customers at their branches in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Dalton, Georgia; Madison, Alabama; Baltimore, Maryland; King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; and Cinnaminson, New Jersey.
Kenco sells the highest quality, most dependable material handling equipment available on the market today. They proudly represent the #1 forklift in the world, Toyota Forklifts, along with other industry leaders such as JLG aerial lifts and Taylor Dunn personnel and burden carriers. Kenco’s award-winning Service and Parts Departments can get a company up and running again no matter what brand of forklift they’re currently using. Their Rental Department can meet an organization’s long or short term requirements so they can keep up with changing business demands.
Upgrading to a Better Solution
Kenco used to rely on a system that many automotive dealers use to manage their operations, which ran on outdated, DOS-based technology. It caused many problems for the company including poor access to data, a lag in getting operational information, poor response time to customer requests, and inconsistent and inefficient dispatching.
After looking at a number of solution options, Kenco discovered and implemented WennSoft Service Management Series and Equipment Management Series.
WennSoft Service Management Series is a solution that improves organizations’ field service by capturing service calls, dispatching assignments, tracking resolutions and managing contracts. WennSoft Equipment Management Series is a solution that maximizes the utilization, life and cost of an organization’s equipment and assets by managing all related information including purchasing, selling, rental and maintenance.
Big Results Right Out of the Gate
Kenco went live with their WennSoft solution in early January and by mid-February, they began feeling comfortable with using the new solution. The timing couldn’t have been better. The economic slowdown, which had affected the forklift industry since late 2007, began hitting Kenco extremely hard in January of 2009.
“Our business came to a screeching halt,” said Jeff Burns, General Manager, Kenco Toyota-Lift.
WennSoft gave Kenco the ability to immediately identify this alarming trend and take quick action. By the end of February, Kenco made the tough decision to reduce their payroll costs.
Burns said that if they were still relying on their old system, it would have been April or May before the company could have taken similar action. This would have caused the company to lose a significant amount of money because it was overstaffed for the amount of work that was coming in.
“Just two months after going live WennSoft saved Kenco more than $100,000 in payroll costs,” said Burns. “It gave us immediate access to operational data and enabled us to respond quickly to changing market conditions.”
Better Access to Data
Kenco’s old system provided almost no access to data. They also had no reporting capabilities – even if a programmer could pull information out of the system, the report was so disorganized and jumbled, that it was useless to employees. “Getting data from our old system was like pulling teeth,” said Burns.
Kenco’s old system wasn’t able to track their equipment inventory or equipment rental, so they managed these using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Their invoices for equipment also had to be done manually using the Excel spreadsheets. Handling everything manually led to many accuracy problems.
“When you have a lot of errors in a system, it erodes your trust in the numbers being produced by that system,” said Burns.
To combat errors, Kenco produced multiple physical inventories as well as checks and balances, which was time and labor-intensive.
“Rather than spending time on things that bring revenue to the business, we were consumed with administrative activities,” said Burns.
WennSoft streamlined their business by allowing them to capture expenses, invoice the four areas of their business (parts, rental, service and equipment), track parts and equipment inventory, report to customers, and gauge the effectiveness of how their company is operating.
“WennSoft has made our company 100% more efficient,” said Burns. “We used to have to enter one transaction into several different spreadsheets, which took lots of time. Now we enter it once and it goes throughout the entire operation.”
Real-Time Operations Data
Another problem that Kenco used to have with their operational system was that data came in too slow. For example, there was always a significant lag time to get a handle on company performance. They used to have to wait until the accounting department finished closing the month – generally 15 days after the last day of the month – before seeing a Profit & Loss statement for the prior month.
“When you have to wait 15 to 45 days to find out how each of your six locations is performing, it makes it extremely difficult to run an organization effectively,” said Burns.
Companies with multiple locations, like Kenco, need instant access to data so they are constantly aware of what is occurring at each location. WennSoft provides this.
With WennSoft Kenco can run their P&L statement anytime they want. In fact, Burns runs a P&L report at least 3 times daily so he can stay on top of the company’s operational performance. Burns can also run a trial balance on the business, expense accounts, revenue and cost of goods.
“I know to the minute how we are performing in all our locations,” said Burns.
Improved Response Time to Customer Requests
It used to take Kenco a long time to respond to a service-customer request. For example, a customer might want to know when the last time Kenco serviced a specific piece of their equipment. This meant someone had to go to the filing cabinet and look through all the old invoices, identify the appropriate serial number of the equipment and determine when the service was done.
“With WennSoft, we can access this information with just a few key strokes, often while the customer is still on the phone,” said Burns.
Improved Dispatching
Kenco’s 6 different sites used to have many nuances to the way each of their sites operated, making it more difficult to manage. Dispatching is an excellent example of this. Each location, used their own method for dispatching technicians: white boards, spreadsheets and even notebooks. Since everything was handled manually, it was not very efficient.
Now that they have WennSoft, Kenco uses one consistent, uniformed dispatching system at all of their locations. It provides them with everything they need all on one board: the day’s service calls, locations of technicians and work they are scheduled to do.
“The dispatch board has made our service department much more efficient,” said Burns.
Satisfied with WennSoft
Kenco is satisfied with how WennSoft has helped it capture expenses, invoice all four areas of their business, track parts and equipment inventory, report to customers, and gauge the effectiveness of how their company is operating.
“We use WennSoft to run our business,” said Burns.
To learn more about how WennSoft Solutions can have a similar impact on your organization, please contact us at 262-821-4100 or info@wennsoft.com.