Minnesota Exteriors Inc: Home exterior designer and builder selects WennSoft, with direct input from its 125-member staff.
"Each employee had an evaluation sheet and commented on each product presented. These people would be using the product each day, so they deserved a voice in the selection."
Lola Wagner
IT Project Manager Minnesota Exteriors, Inc.
Minnesota Exteriors, Inc.,(MEI) http://www.minnesotaexteriors.com was founded in 1947 by Martin Bennis, Sr. and Martin Bennis, Jr. Marty Jr. and his wife, Zenalou, grew the company throughout the next several decades until they turned the business over to their four sons - Greg, Jeff, Dan and Tom. The four brothers continue the family tradition.
Steady growth has been a constant throughout the company’s six decades, providing exterior siding, windows and doors, and in-home design services. Today, customers are served by nearly 125 employees from a 100,000 square foot showroom and warehouse in Osseo, Minn.
Solution Needs:
Minnesota Exteriors began implementing a new software solution in 2004. After just one year, they realized their new solution has multiple inefficiencies and began searching for a solution to keep pace with their evolving company and growing customer base.
“The software did not allow for sharing information,” said Lola Wagner, information technologies project manager for MEI. “Our operations director needed to go to different areas to find the information he needed. It was an accounting-based solution and did not have the production services module we needed. Too much was done on paper.
“Everything our previous provider said they could do, they could not,” Wagner said. “Also, it was not
built for the construction business.” “Also, Minnesota Exteriors operates two other companies – Midwest Commercial Exteriors and North County Distributors. The system could not handle information processed between companies as we would have liked.”
The first step was to speak with staff members to learn in-house procedures.
“After the internal input, I searched online and spoke to many different construction companies,” Wagner said. “When I asked what they were using, Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Microsoft Great Plains) and WennSoft came up quite often. There was a lot of research and footwork.”
Wagner and her team traveled to tradeshows, meeting with solution providers to discuss Minnesota Exteriors’ processes and needs before any presentations were made. “We needed someone who could handle construction as well as a multi-company corporation,” Wagner said.
About 60 MEI employees saw presentations from the final three candidate companies.
“Each employee had an evaluation sheet and commented on each product presented,” Wagner said. “These people would be using the product each day, so they deserved a voice in the selection.”
Wagner and company executives completed an extensive search before reaching their final decision. The final decision to go with WennSoft was a “no-brainer,” according to Wagner.
“WennSoft was strong on both development and service. In the past, we were doing planning as a company, then seeing if our software provider could do it – it was double planning,” she said. “With WennSoft, we have traveled to their headquarters and seen what they are developing for the future, allowing us to plan three-to-four years down the road. We are already talking about 2009.”
Company-wide involvement continued after the final decision was made to go with WennSoft. MEI turned their main conference room into a training room. All groups were brought in to train on the system before launch – accounting, production (including remodel, new construction, gutters, roofing), service department, warehouse and distribution).
“We had one ‘Super User’ from each group,” Wagner said. “We trained the trainers before and during implementation, which we continue to do today.”
Improvements – From E-mail to the Bottom Line
Functionality is already improving for Minnesota Exteriors. An estimating feature has been added so estimates are imported directly without the need to enter manually in the office. Company officials are talking with WennSoft about advances in MobileTEC and how it might be implemented, as well as implementing bar coding with Great Plains. “This will be a huge efficiency for us,” said Rob Corniea, MEI director of operations.
Among other benefits, WennSoft has freed up space on the company’s e-mail server.
“When project reports existed only in paper form, the e-mail system would get flooded with ‘I lost the file, does anyone have it?’” Wagner said. “That was no way to run a business.”
“We could never tell the status of a job with any accuracy because each department had (Microsoft Office) Excel® spreadsheet with their information,” Corniea said. “Nothing was combined until the job was completed. Now, all external information is combined and job status can be found at the click of a button. It literally saves hours and hours.”
As well as reporting the present, WennSoft helps Minnesota Exteriors predict the future.
“The system allows us to see what is on the horizon,” Corniea said. “We can run a schedule for one week, two weeks, even a month out to schedule production and warehousing.”
The company also sees increased efficiency in customer service.
“In the past, if a customer called with a question, we had to put them on hold until we could dig up their file,” Wagner said. “Now, anyone can answer a customer call by simply calling up their name and detailing every part of the job we did for them.
“Also, our sales and marketing team in remodel uses SmartList and mail merge to send out thank you letters and surveys to customers within five minutes of a job being closed.”
Wagner’s confidence with WennSoft grows each day.
“It’s nice to envision things and know you have a solution that can meet it. If I see inefficiency, the system can adapt to it instead of dismissing it out of hand,” she said. “We can modify without blowing up the rest of the system.”
As for the future, MEI views WennSoft as a key player in helping them move forward in coming years.
“Over the next five years, Minnesota Exteriors, Inc. will expand its lead as the largest exterior building products installation company in the Minneapolis / St. Paul market,” said company President Steven Schiltz. “This will require increased efficiency in running our installation operations, better quality checks in the field and reporting as the work is being done plus increased contact with our customer’s field supervision crews. Knowing what MEI needs to remain the biggest and the best overhauled our enterprise software capabilities to focus on these core items.”
“The fact that WennSoft and Microsoft Dynamics GP integrate so completely is huge,” Wagner said. “The accounting package needed to serve all three of our companies and Microsoft Dynamics GP does that for us.”