“A big part of our goal is to make our business processes more efficient. Ultimately, we want to become more efficient so we can continue to grow, and SYSPRO helps us do that.”
– Beverley Thomas, Chief Financial Officer, Action Car and Truck Accessories
Customer Profile
Action Car and Truck Accessories sells aftermarket auto accessories, provides installation services, and performs fleet vehicle up-fitting. Headquartered in Moncton, New Brunswick, the company employs more than 200 people working out of 33 retail locations (including five franchise operations), two primary distribution centers in New Brunswick and Ontario, and two satellite centers in Manitoba and Newfoundland. In addition to supplying its retail customers, Action Car and Truck Accessories is a warehouse distributor supplying car dealerships and jobbers. The company markets its goods across Canada.
The Business Challenge
CFO Beverley Thomas has been with Action Car and Truck Accessories since 1998. “When I arrived, the company had recently implemented Impact Award (an early version of SYSPRO ERP). I’d been using Impact Award for a couple of years at another company, and I initially came in to help with the transition from the previous software,” Thomas says.
In 1998, Action Car and Truck Accessories was a manufacturing and distribution operation with a minimal retail presence. Over the next 10 years, that relationship switched completely, with retail and warehouse distribution becoming the company’s bread-and-butter and manufacturing taking a back seat. In 2007, Action Car and Truck Accessories exited the manufacturing business.
The Solution
At that time, the company considered switching from SYSPRO to a more retail-oriented ERP system. “In the end, however, we decided to stick with SYSPRO. We’re an SKU intensive company, and a purely retail system might not take care of our supply chain as well as SYSPRO does. In addition, as SYSPRO evolves it becomes increasingly accommodating to our needs as a retailer. And finally, SYSPRO is highly customizable. Having the liberty to adjust the software to fit our business gave us the liberty to tailor the processes we needed,” Thomas says.
