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Success Story
MSI HVAC Boost Sales and Business Results with MITS Discover
Company Background
When Ed King, President of southern California’s MSI HVAC, realized he needed better visibility into business operations, he knew the information he needed was available in his Activant Eclipse system. “But what we needed,” King reflects, “was fast, easy access to clear, concise information. Eclipse is a great program but simply isn’t designed to give us that kind of information in the timely manner we need.”
MSI HVAC is a multi-state distributor and manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning products, serving the contractors of the southwestern United States with
over 350,000 square feet of warehouse space, 250 employees, and two dozen product lines.
“We need to be able to analyze our sales in a number of ways,” explains King, “by category, price line and buy line, and in more detail at the branch or product level.” Why?
The industry changes quickly,” says King, “and the changes aren’t always obvious. When a buying pattern changes, we need to know it quickly so we can respond.”
The Solution
MSI selected MITS Discover, the OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) solution designed specifically for MultiValue systems and the MitsWeb Dashboard – and King became both a
strong champion and an early power user of the solution. ‘I travel a lot, and need access from just about anywhere. MITS Discover gives me that, through my Web browser.”
Along with MITS Discover’s query, reporting, and data access tools, MITS provided a pair of prepackaged analysis databases – known as hypercubes – for sales and expense data.
Hypercubes let users see information at a higher level, then rank, trend, explore, and drill down to identify underlying trends and root causes--all at very high speeds. “Cubes” are stored separately from operational data, so queries and transactions can’t bog each other down.
Soon, MSI began designing their own hypercubes, with training and assistance from MITS when needed. “We’ve created some extremely helpful cubes,” King reports. Now, for example, each sales rep can see who’s buying what, and who’s not buying, all through the month. An inventory cube has MSI managing levels more
effectively. And location managers can monitor their P&L daily.
“We brought better information to executives, too,” adds King, “by rolling out MITS Dashboard.” This solution lets time-pressured users see a graphically-oriented snapshot of the business whenever they need it (for example, a familiar green-yellow-red indicator instantly flashes the status of margin by each location).
Impressive Results
King is enthusiastic about the results MSI gets with MITS Discover. He likes the fact that it’s easy for users to create and share reports. “All in all, we have people all over the company making better decisions,” he says. “It’s safe to say it’s helped us grow our sales by a good 10 percent.”
Says King: “MITS Discover lets us get information more easily, and – just as importantly -- also helps us execute more effectively. We enjoy increased sales, and we’re able to identify and respond to opportunities more quickly.”
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Company Profile:
Name:
MSI HVAC
Employees:
250
Description:
Multi-state distributor and manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning products
Vertical Software Provider:
Activant Eclipse
Database:
IBM UniVerse
Web Site:
www.msihvac.com
| “All in all, we have people all over the company making better decisions… It’s safe to say [MITS Discover] has helped us grow our sales by a good 10 percent.”
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- Ed King
President at MSI HVAC |
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