A Competitive Differentiator: Moving to the Cloud to be the Best Solution Partner for Customers
In business for 75 years, Fairbank is more than an agricultural product application and propane solutions vendor. The company offers competitively priced products, but stands apart by going beyond the sale, doing whatever it takes to meet customers’ needs. And farmers, ranchers, and agriculture producers have taken notice, relying on Fairbank as a one-stop shop for critical parts and equipment to keep operations up and running.
“Our customers can’t afford downtime, and therefore, neither can we,” says Joel Edwards, President and CEO of Fairbank. “Just as our customers count on us, we count on Epicor Eclipse to keep us operating efficiently and be the best solution partner we can be.”
An Epicor customer for several years, Epicor Eclipse was Fairbank’s software solution of choice, and the company had no plans to change. On an impressive growth trajectory, the business expanded to 14 locations and was eyeing more acquisitions and a headquarters relocation. This spurred an assessment of the company’s IT infrastructure and the ability of its current technology to support short- and long-term goals.
Reducing risk was Edwards’ top priority, closely followed by the ability to quickly bring new branch locations into Eclipse. “The Epicor team, along with our Managed Service Provider (MSP), Omega Systems, discussed the benefits of eliminating our hardware maintenance and building more operational resiliency,” Edwards shares. “We didn’t want to move a large infrastructure to our new location, so the time was right to move Eclipse to the cloud.”
Edwards knew from experience that not all technology implementations are created equal, and there were nerves within Fairbank about moving to the cloud. Epicor eased those concerns, spearheading ongoing discussions about business needs, pain points, and plans for a seamless migration. And the Epicor team helped to deliver a smooth move to Eclipse in the cloud within a five-month period. Fairbank only navigated a few hurdles, such as needing to upgrade select Fairbank branches to high-speed fiber to support the desired speed.
“Epicor has been a great partner for our cloud migration, providing responsive support to ensure everything was working smoothly,” Edwards adds. “Two days after the migration we heard from branch managers that it was business as usual—exactly what you want to hear as a CEO.”
In addition to improved business continuity, Eclipse gives Fairbank real-time data and systems connectivity advantages via a full API suite. For example, the company has integrated its CRM platform, HubSpot, with Eclipse, giving salespeople the ability to help provide quotes and answer customer questions from anywhere—right from their phones.
Plus, Eclipse plays a key role in Fairbank’s ongoing eCommerce expansion, tightly integrated with the company’s website. As a result, customers have new self-service options, enabling them to log into a portal and see stock and availability based on data within Eclipse. And the company can more easily create rich, data-driven content to make its online presence more robust, pushing information right to Eclipse versus relying on a stand-alone product information management (PIM) solution.
“Epicor gives us a major industry edge as most of our competitors don’t have an integrated ERP system across all branch locations, allowing us to interact with customers in more powerful, meaningful ways,” Edwards explains.
Edwards credits Epicor Data Analytics as a life saver for the company, eliminating the need for a dedicated report writer. No more waiting until the end of the month for sales performance data, with executives able to quickly view sales numbers by customer, sales rep, location, and individual parts and equipment, as well as easily upload budget and forecasting documents.
“Fairbank is privately held and so to be able to bring up Epicor Data Analytics on a call with our CFO and investors and look at business data and trends together is a huge value add,” he says.
Epicor gives us a major industry edge as most of our competitors don’t have an integrated ERP system across all branch locations, allowing us to interact with customers in more powerful, meaningful ways.
Eclipse is also integrated with the company’s shipment provider, eShipping, providing one place to see information on parcel shipments across all store locations. But the business-wide visibility benefits don’t stop there. Employees also have insight into stock and product availability, making it easy to place transfer orders between stores to fulfill customers’ urgent requests. And Fairbank’s accounting department benefits from increased control over payment processes, leveraging Epicor Payment Exchange to handle credit card processing, payments, and accurate funds transfers.
Fairbank is reaping the benefits of Epicor Learning Center, using training tools and resources to quickly onboard newly acquired companies with Eclipse in the cloud.
“Epicor allows us to take a Learning Management System (LMS) approach to education, giving employees advanced Eclipse learning from a role-based perspective, freeing IT for other customer critical projects.”
With Epicor standing behind us, we’ve doubled our business in the last three years. As we continue to add new companies, we’ve proven the ease of integrating new locations into Eclipse in the cloud, providing our customers with access to inventory across the entire enterprise.
Fairbank understands that while price is important to customers, trust is everything. When a farmer is on the field trying to repair a heat source, spray equipment, or a field loader on a tight timeframe, knowing Fairbank can get the needed part is critical. And having accurate, real-time data about inventory, orders, and shipping helps make that happen.
“With Epicor standing behind us, we’ve doubled our business in the last three years. As we continue to add new companies, we’ve proven the ease of integrating new locations into Eclipse in the cloud, providing our customers with access to inventory across the entire enterprise,” Edwards concludes.
