Client Story

Kitchen & Bath (KB) Wholesalers has provided Philadelphia and the tri-state area with building materials and related products for over 40 years. The company originally used QuickBooks to handle its accounting processes as well as a custom-made Microsoft product to manage sales orders and inventory data.

The popular wholesaler started experiencing major issues with the proprietary infrastructure. In the middle of one of their busiest seasons, employees were duplicating work by posting in both systems and drowning in backend paperwork. As a result, their customers were not getting the full support and information they needed. They had to find a solution to resolve these tedious manual processes and time-consuming inefficiencies, fast.

Alan Lewenthal, VP at KB Wholesalers, started researching ERP software immediately. In addition to having an ERP solution that could better manage their accounting, sales, and inventory in one system, KB Wholesalers was ready to move to the cloud. After 15 years and 2 crashes in a server environment, it was time. “There were a lot of sleepless nights if the server went down, and we didn’t want to be reliant on it for the rest of our days,” explains Alan.

During software selection, he discovered that his timeframe and requirements were not as easy to meet as he had hoped. “Most solutions I looked at were too expensive and overly bloated,” he says. “We were looking for simplicity for our staff and to implement a system that could work within our current processes.” Eventually, he downloaded a trial version of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. He was able to get all transactions and vendors posted within a day and decided this was the right solution for their short timeline and limited resources.

The problem was that almost every vendor he interviewed could not meet their requirements and accelerated timeline until he found the Clients First team. “Clients First was able to give us everything we wanted,” Alan says. “They specialized in our company size and industry and had the right resources in place to help us achieve what we wanted. They were also incredibly upfront and honest!”

Working with Clients First as their partner, KB Wholesalers was able to rapidly deploy Business Central in 5 weeks. Their biggest priorities were to improve the user and customer experience, and they could see improvements in those areas within the first 2 weeks.

Their tech-savvy users were able to quickly learn and adopt the software thanks to practical training and extensive testing from Clients First. According to Alan, “The Clients First team was really good at explaining the software the right way. If you practice what they preach, it works.” He says his users thank him every day and appreciate that they can access the system from anywhere. Here’s how he sums it up:

“Staff are so grateful for the new system because it makes day-to-day operations much easier. The responsibility levels are more clearly defined, people are more involved, and their mindsets have changed to become more proactive with the customer.”

Since go-live, KB Wholesalers has experienced significant time savings across the company. With faster access to information and more logical processes, work orders are being pushed out considerably faster. Everyone from the warehouse staff to the accounting team is on the same page with more visibility and communication.

The customers are delighted with the order accuracy, efficient paper trail, and overall organization. They have communication directly from the quote to the processing of the invoice, so they always know their order status. Next year, KB Wholesalers plans to implement a customer portal to make life even easier for clients.