The DIAL 2000 Project for E P Barrus

E P Barrus is the company behind many market-leading brands in the farm, garden, marine, vehicle and industrials markets. Over a number of years, the company has developed a successful B2B Dealer Immediate Access Link known as DIAL to enable dealers to place orders, receive acknowledgements and obtain up-to-date stock availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. With the advent of the Millennium, DIAL 2000 for the 21st century was conceived.

The company has an aggressive, extremely successful growth strategy and DIAL 2000 had to be innovative enough to partner this growth, providing them with a flexible, state-of-the-art B2B and e.commerce building platform. E P Barrus's reputation is founded on quality - and as holders of ISO 9001, the international quality standards rating, they only work with organisations with similar quality standards. Having worked closely with Active Media Business Solutions on numerous other projects including the previous version of DIAL, they had confidence in the high quality, innovative solutions for which the company is known.

E P Barrus's main aims for this mission critical project were to update from Windows 3.1, to improve and increase functionality based on feedback from dealers and internal users and to enhance corporate branding. Upgraded integration with the company's AS/400 GEAC system was also envisaged.

Industry standards had been set by DIAL, and the new system had to deliver real improvement value to dealers/franchises and E P Barrus.

Re-launched after an intensive eighteen-month re-development cycle, the updated system is wizard driven, with modern 9.x / XP style user interfaces and enhanced graphics and custom video clips.

Following a thorough review, the ordering process was extensively redesigned to improve automation, integration, convenience and speed. Dealers can now, for example, look up and import quotes directly from multiple third party electronic parts catalogue applications (EPC), and then with one click, send an order via dial-up modem, ISDN, ADSL or permanent connection directly to the Barrus AS/400 GEAC system for back office processing and fulfilment. Seamless integrated automation means that an order can be placed, processed and acknowledged in less than a minute. As none of the information needs to be keyed in manually, there are no typographical errors and sales order processing costs have been significantly reduced. A new international language facility has been added enabling users to run the software in French and German as well as English. The project team's attention to detail also included dealer usability reviews and the addition of a context sensitive on-line help function.

More than 800 dealers use the new system on a regular basis to place and check orders, search and view products, check prices, special offers and promotions and review order history. DIAL 2000, installed via CD ROM, now carries E P Barrus branding throughout, updates itself automatically on a quarterly basis and requires minimum support.

The new monitoring and management software enables E P Barrus to support dealers and franchises much more effectively, ensuring they provide the quality of service on which their reputation is founded.

The outcome of the DIAL 2000 project is a sophisticated, leading edge B2B solution that has been universally well received and become the preferred means of order lodgement. In 2001, the DIAL system handled over 29,000 orders. Along with cost and resource use reduction, efficiency and reliability have been greatly improved. E P Barrus and industry standards have been met and exceeded - mission accomplished.