Founded in 1922, Dayton Parts (DP) manufactures and distributes aftermarket undercarriage replacement products. With 24-hour electronic ordering, sales representation in 49 states, regularly scheduled and expedited delivery programs and over 35,000 replacement parts in stock, it provides one-stop shopping for the heavy-duty, medium-duty, and light-duty truck and trailer independent aftermarket. DP s 1,800 customers (independent warehouse and mega distributors, wheel and rim distributors and spring repair shops) need timely and accurate parts deliveries.
The ERP Problem: User-Unfriendly Interface
Users of DP's online, 24/7 customer portal could not easily view shipping information for orders without migrating between multiple screens in the ERP application and re-entering order or waybill numbers. In addition, users had to download and maintain Java updates in order to use the host server. Basically, customers were being saddled with extra navigation and input time, making for a user-unfriendly experience. DP wanted to change that, and point man Terry Rishel knew he needed to find a solution that would not require a host server and could streamline multi-step navigation for accessing the ERP system on the company's AS400 iSeries machine.
| DP By The Numbers - 3-month deployment window
- 8x increase in Web site traffic
- 65 less customer service calls a day (on average)
- 1 screen interface for users
- 1,800 more productive and satisfied customers
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The Solution: A Web-based App
After considering different options, DP's Rishel decided to go with a developer-friendly platform from NetManage called OnWeb that can display iSeries applications as new web-based applications. Rishel was impressed with the application's ability to streamline complex AS400 navigations into a single-screen interface for users, and for DP, OnWeb offered easy tools for creating and maintaining host access applications. Now that they've gotten the web-based system up and rolling, DP plans to enhance its order process even more by integrating parts information from its online catalog directly with its ordering system.
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