Distributor Profile

• Industrial Commercial Plumbing Distributors generally service factories, industrial buildings, hospitals, office buildings, and commercial areas. They take commercial plumbing products and make it usable in large volumes for these projects.
• Residential Plumbing Distributors often service residential homes with a focus on bathrooms, kitchens, and remodeling projects.

Industry Terms

Several websites offer glossaries of plumbing terminology, including:

http://www.keidel.com/resource/glossary/    

http://www.alpha-plumbing.com/plumbing-terminology-a.htm

http://www.plumbingstore.com/terminologies.html

For a complete list of plumbing products and product groups please visit: http://www.globalspec.com/Industrial-Directory/plumbing catalog  

Infor’s ERP FACTS Plumbing components

• Front counter capabilities: Many plumbing wholesalers experience a rush of customers at their front counters every morning, requesting everything from p-traps to PVC piping. Their only common demand is that they need   product now. Infor’s ERP FACTS offers you the front counter capabilities to handle the early morning rush quickly and efficiently. You can help any customer on the spot by accessing your entire inventory from the Order Entry screen, offering a price, placing the order, capture the signature at the counter, then accepting payment or recording the transaction for invoicing. Additionally Infor’s ERP FACTS allows you to apply cash or credit card deposits against any order.
• Quoting Products and Projects: In the plumbing industry, quoting prices for 50 line item orders is a daily if not hourly practice. You can easily turn those quotes into orders in Infor’s ERP FACTS, saving the customer service representatives’ valuable time and reducing errors.   With Infor’s ERP FACTS, you can re-use and copy quotes from one customer to another. And, since suppliers often offer different customers different prices, the solution will automatically adjust the pricing accordingly- ensuring you maintain excellent relationships with your best clients.
• Order History: Infor’s ERP FACTS allows you to search through a customer’s complete sales history, and also enables you to search by self determined criteria. You can narrow your sales history search by date range or keywords- i.e., “copper fittings”. And, in a few simple steps, add that item to the customers’ current order. This saves time and eliminates trips to the filing cabinet to thumb through past customer invoices.
• Accessory Items: Infor’s ERP FACTS automatically “suggests” products that go with items on a customer’s order, helping increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. Plus it saves time, since service representative do not have to flip through catalogs to tell your customers if they have the choice of stainless steel, chrome, or rosewood handles when they buy their faucets.
• Assemblies: Infor’s ERP FACTS’ light manufacturing functionality enables you to keep items like a water closet (a.k.a. toilet) in your solution, at one price, with one item code, eliminating the need to re-enter a long list of component items each time you sell and assemble the items.   This saves order entry personnel time and prevents costly errors and mix-ups. Customer service representatives can increase sales by up selling assembled or manufactured products when customers request groups of items.
• Disassembles: Sometimes it’s more profitable to purchase completed assemblies or kits from a supplier, then break them down into separate SKUs to stock and sell. With Infor’s ERP FACTS disassemblies’ capabilities, you can bring an assembly into the warehouse, tear it down, and sell its individual components through Infor’s ERP FACTS return-to-stock functionality, allowing you to sell an assembly without a certain component, or even exchange one component for another.
• Lot Billing: When handling large projects, contractors often want to order everything necessary for the job upfront to ensure that it is on hand when they need it. But, they also want to be able to receive the material in stages and pay for it as they receive it. Infor’s ERP FACTS enables distributors to handle lot billing by enabling them to first deliver and bill contractors for rough-in material, then invoice and deliver finished goods at a later date.
• Document Imaging/Linking: Plumbing distributors must often keep things like exploded parts lists on file for contractors. In the past, this information was usually kept in file cabinets. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors handle this by allowing them to store and create links to images, spec sheets, installation instructions and much more online.
• Job Based Pricing: Infor’s ERP FACTS enables you to establish job specific pricing schedules through your solution, automating and simplifying the process. Infor’s ERP FACTS job based pricing functionality ensures you pass on the best possible value to your customers so they can factor special prices when calculating their own quotes. You benefit from more organized processes, a better ability to track information, and repeat customers.

Infor has customer overviews available on the following plumbing supply distributors

• AC Direct
• TMS South
• Golden X Plumbing
• Other Available Upon Request

Associations

• American Supply Association (ASA)
•   American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
• American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE)
• Central Florida Chapter of ASPE

Trade Shows

• American Supply Association (ASA) www.asa.net
• American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE) www.aspe.org

Buying/Marketing Groups

• Affiliated Distributors (A-D) PLUMBING, More then 50 distributor members, www.adhq.com/divisions
• WIT & Co., more then 70 distributor members, www.wit-co.com
• Johnston Supply, more then 280 locally-owned stores, www.johnstonsupply.com

Publications

• Supply House Times (monthly): www.supplyht.com ; targeted to distributors; covers plumbing and PLUMBING news, products, manufacturing.
• The Wholesaler (monthly): www.thewholesaler.com ; targets distributors; covers industry and product news, events, etc.
• PLUMBINGR Business (monthly): www.Plumbingrbusiness.com   Offers information about the entire heating ventilation, and air conditioning industry.
  
  >>More about Infor's ERP FACTS