[Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a three-part feature on digital dexterity in the LBM industry. For Part 1 on dispatch and delivery systems click here.]
E-commerce
The most desired applications, according to this year’s group of ProSales 100 dealers, are e-commerce solutions. Only 17% of large dealers have an order tracking system in place, but a whopping 44% plan to get one. Also, noteworthy, is that only 10% of these top dealers currently have an online store in place, but 32% plan to build one.
Why are so many large dealers interested in products and services that help them conduct business electronically? The short answer: It’s what their customers want. As customers become more comfortable buying online, they will expect LBM dealers to expand their presence there.
“We’re hearing more from our customers that they’re looking for the ability to order remotely, submit it in for us to pick and deliver, or have it available for them to pick up in our location,” Irish says. “We are definitely focused on that area and we’ll definitely move forward in a very focused manner going into 2020.”
As dealers transition more of their business to the digital world, they’ll capture more data, enabling them to analyze it and make smarter business decisions. 84 Lumber, for example, created its own business intelligence tools “to view sales performance trends by store, geography, customer, markets, product hierarchy, and dozens of other attributes,” says Jon Husted, vice president of application development at the Pennsylvania-based company, which ranked fourth on this year’s ProSales 100 list.
Not only will transitioning more of their business to the digital world help dealers better serve their customers, it will also give them a head start on any competitor that tries to digitally disrupt them. “It’s just not reasonable not to expect someone, whether it’s Amazon or someone else, to build out a global model that lets people procure building materials online effectively,” says John Maiuri, president of the LBM&H Division at ECI Software Solutions.
If digital disruption is coming to the LBM industry, ignoring it won’t help. You’d only have to look at the current state of brick-and-mortar book, music, and video rental stores to see how well that worked out for these businesses.
Instead, LBM dealers could transition to the digital world by looking for solutions such as point-of-sale, purchasing, inventory management, accounts receivable, reporting, and analytics applications from e-commerce solutions such as ECI’s RockSolid Max, Epicor’s Eagle, and DMSi’s Agility system.
Simply building an online store doesn’t mean customers will come. You’ll then have to promote it heavily. But, when the customers do start to arrive, you’ll be ready for them.
[Editor’s Note: For Part 3 on artificial intelligence, click here.]
