How this lumber and home building material franchise saved tens of thousands of dollars through automation

"We had a system that was 30-plus years old," Ben says. "The manufacturer was starting to discontinue support for it and only those over 40 years old knew how to use the system, but younger employees had a hard time. Nothing was automated; you had to type everything manually. The system broke down a lot and I never knew if it would work. When we did have a problem, it often took a long time to fix. We needed to upgrade to a new system that could automate processes, was easier to use, and would last us at least for the next 10 to 15 years."

According to Ben, the company also lost significant money because price changes had to be done manually on the vendor's schedule. Getting this done wasn't always possible, leading to items being sold at little or no profit. Training, especially for younger new hires, was tedious and difficult, and product transfers between stores were laborious and frustrating.

Determined to modernize and move away from the headaches of the outdated system, Ben started researching various software programs. He narrowed it down to two: Spruce and another industry software Ben had experience with. Spruce’s reliability, user-friendliness, reporting functions, and time- and money-saving features made it the clear winner.

Ben puts price changes at the top of the benefits Spruce provides. The ability to schedule price changes in advance ensures that businesses like Windsor Plywood can capture additional gross margins that were typically lost due to older software and onerous processes.

“Being able to schedule price changes--days or months in advance--saves us tens of thousands of dollars of lost gross margin,” said Ben. “It means I can make price changes on my schedule versus the vendor's and not lose money. This is very helpful during times of pricing volatility like we experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic when vendors that hadn't changed pricing in five years had eight changes in a year.”

Windsor Plywood can update shelf labels and coordinate the price change, allowing for a more seamless process and greater gross margin realization.

"Spruce lets me easily input a price change for one product or an entire vendor and/or category almost instantly and print only the stickers we need. This is a big difference compared to what we had to do before. With the old system, I'd have to go in and manually type it all individually which would take at least 30 minutes for a vendor with 180 to 200 items. We also wasted a lot of stickers because, with the old system, we had to print a range, including items that didn't have a price change. It sounds like a little thing, but all the wasted labels add up over time.”

Another of Ben's favorite Spruce features is its ability to instantly run reports so he can make smart adjustments quickly and before it negatively impacts the business. Examples of the most valuable reports that he runs every morning are low or negative inventory and EOD exceptions reports.

• Low or Negative Inventory Report - Each morning, Ben runs the low or negative inventory report to get an accurate understanding of products they are out of or only have a few left. “This report rescues me from looking like I don't know what's under my roof if a customer needs more than what I have available. It keeps customers with me rather than going to a competitor.
• EOD Exceptions Report – This report identifies low-profit margins and has also had a big impact on the business as it instantly tells Ben if he sold a product for less than he paid for it. He estimates this specific report has prevented him from repeating the same mistake over and over, saving him around $2,000 each month.

Spruce’s modern technology has also helped Windsor Plywood work faster and more efficiently with other franchise locations, especially if an item was out of stock at his store. "Before Spruce, we would often play phone tag with other locations, waste time trying to get through, and experience other delays. It would then take a couple of days to get that product into our hands. Now, the order goes from computer to computer instantly and we can often get the product on the same day. The fast turnaround from this automation probably saves my staff two weeks of time. It has also created happier and more loyal customers."

Spruce also saves Windsor Plywood’s employees time when it comes to onboarding and managing inventory.

• New hire onboarding - The software is easy to use and intuitive, making the employee adoption rate much faster than ever before. By not wasting massive amounts of time training people, Vickery estimates that he is saving 20-40 hours per new hire, which enables them to start bringing value to the business faster.
• Taking counts and ordering inventory - With Spruce, employees can input orders by scanning barcodes from the aisles. This has eliminated the need for them to physically walk back and forth to manually key this important information into a computer.