The Challenge
Everett Eckart founded Eckart Supply Company in 1962. The goal of the firm was to make it easier to find plumbing, electrical and HVAC supplies in Southern Indiana. The family-owned distributor has grown significantly to over eight locations across the U.S.
As a high-growth company, Eckart Supply didn’t have experience with eCommerce and produced all of their sales through direct selling and strong relationships with local contractors and companies. The company needed a partner to help them navigate the complexities of building a new web store and generate eCommerce sales with a robust eCommerce platform. The ideal platform had to have out-of-the-box integrations with their ERP system, Epicor Eclipse, and have the ability to provide customers with real-time visibility of inventory across Eckart’s eight locations. Another challenge was that various customers had different pricing, so Sean had to find a way to display different pricing through the site depending on the customer
The Solution
Since Eckart Supply was part of the Affiliated Distributors Buyer Group, they tapped into their network for recommended eCommerce platforms. They ultimately chose Billtrust eCommerce because of our out-of-the-box integration with Epicor Eclipse, a user-friendly interface and rich application ecosystem. In addition, Billtrust’s web store enabled their customers to see real-time inventory and pricing information. Customers can create accounts through the website and view their unique pricing because customer-specific data is sourced from Eckart’s ERP system to display accurate pricing within the webstore.
“We are extremely happy with the decision to use Billtrust eCommerce. The platform is easy to use. Customers love the ability to search for products by part number and create product groups to group frequently ordered products together for faster ordering.”
Sean Lawson
Director of Information Technology Eckart Supply
The Results
Eckart partnered with Billtrust eCommerce to navigate posting their inventory, buyer specific pricing, with real time ERP updates resulting in a state of the art eCommerce platform launch in 2020. After rolling out Eckart Supply’s webstore, the firm’s online sales revenue grew from zero to two million dollars annually. Salespeople are also spending less time answering phone calls and taking orders manually, and more time building relationships with key customers and expanding their business with Eckart. Now a majority of customers who know what they need order through Eckart Supply’s website rather than calling the company directly, creating a seamless customer buying experience.
Sales is not the only department who benefitted from Billtrust eCommerce. The Accounts Payable department’s customer call volume and billing inquiries were greatly reduced too since Billtrust eCommerce made pricing, order status and billing information available online. Altogether, they were able to save the company up to 60 HOURS per week, or about 1 full-time employee with the new webstore.
