How Wright Implement Started Bringing Deals to Settlement Faster

April 18, 2022

Dealer: Wright Implement
Locations: Kentucky, Indiana
User: Joe Smith, Operations Manager

The Original Situation

Wright Implement wanted a new order-to-cash (O2C) process to move purchase orders (PO) to settlement. The old system, which they dubbed “workflow”, required manual, complicated updates, long processes and often resulted in delaying returns to inventory.

The system’s limitations ultimately caused Wright Implement to look for another solution. That search led them to Anvil App Works in 2019.

Pain Points That Led Wright Implement to Anvil

Wright Implement had a list of specific issues they hoped to improve in their O2C process.

To start with, quotes were being managed by the salespeople and tied to individual stock units. This created process gaps and forced awkward workarounds. Although their previous workflow system managed deals acceptably, Smith acknowledged that changes to a deal in the system were problematic and required running updates to bring in the latest info. Additional problems needing to be addressed:

Their workflow system did not automatically sync with John Deere. This led to:
- - Changes to a deal required staff to run an update.
  - Updates were complicated and many staff couldn’t do it, leading to incorrect or outdated information on deals at settlement.
  - Sometimes stock would get removed from a PO but not returned to inventory, leading to long delays – as much as 60 days or more – before the error was caught and marked as available in inventory.
The workflow system only worked with deals and did not have a separate function for requests not related to deals. This led to:
- - Creating “dummy” deals as an internal workaround to address requests not related to a deal (such as a flat tire on inventory).
Inefficient time gaps in updating details on trades. This led to:
- - Trade units appeared in quotes, but not in workflow until the deal was signed.
  - Trades not shown as available inventory until arrival on site.
  - Trade machinery sitting on the lot it arrived at until deal close, rather than being identified immediately and made available to service.
  - Delays in inspections and service.
Status quo presented limitations from a management perspective. They encountered:
- - No way to generate reports based on salespeople’s quoting activity, progress toward a deal and inventory included in quotes.
  - Limited deal/PO reporting capability available in dealership systems.
  - No way to tie trades and incentives to deals for reporting and analysis.

The dealership eventually realized it was time develop and build out more capability in its workflow system. “When we looked at making changes to the old system,” says Smith, “we found out that we were limited in what we could accomplish and the level of customization.” That search led Wright Implement to Anvil App Works.

Anvil’s O2C Solution

According to Smith, the dealership started looking for a solution to replace their current workflow system with one that integrated actively with JDQuote2, EQUIP and other John Deere systems, and offered enough customization to address their issues.

“When we looked at Anvil, we could see that by also integrating the CRM package with the O2C, we could do more,” he says.

They wanted to find a system that could track everything. Smith points out, “In Anvil we began managing entire quotes starting when the quote was marked sold. Anvil automatically takes the quote, marks the individual stock units sold and ties them to the new PO and the customer. We have so much more information about the deal now because we manage the deal by the quote.

“We now know, ‘Hey, these were sold together.’ We know more information about the customer. We know more information about what they were sold for and what incentives they were sold under, and we get it all earlier in the process.” he continued. “Before we had none of that information.”

Anvil also streamlined Wright’s work request system. In addition to generating requests solely from deals, as before, Smith says there is much more flexibility in generating requests and distributing them to the appropriate work queues. “There were things we really wanted to do at the dealership: To send information to the service department, especially regarding trades and different requests that weren’t tied to a deal, or when timing of a request wasn’t defined by the deal timeline.”

Using Anvil, Smith explains that Wright can now use one system across the dealership to log requests for inspections, requests for trade information or requests for repairs — to orders and deals, customers’ existing machinery or to stock units sitting on the lot (even units that have not arrived on site yet). “And so, service now works with one system for all those requests, particularly when coming from the sales department.”

“The other big thing we were trying to capture in the system was the trade information,” he says. On a quote, Anvil tracks not only the information about what was sold, but also what came in on trade. “Some of these deals go a long time — six months to a year or more,” says Smith. “Combine heads may not be scheduled to show up until August on paper, but they may show up in January. If we have them in January, we’d like to be able to do an inspection on them and complete any potential repairs at that point, versus waiting until August. Then they are ready for sale right away, and we can even pre-sell them.”

Using Anvil, stock numbers can be assigned to trade units when the PO is created, and the inspection request can be set to automatically trigger when the unit shows up on the lot. “The Anvil system now allows us to do technology requests, create a payment request for an outside payment, or even handle a situation where we’re purchasing something from a customer,” says Smith.

Within Anvil’s O2C feature users can:

Initiate inspection requests
Assign stock numbers at the time of trade
Submit a technology request
Create a payment request
Track used equipment trade-ins
and more!

“We’re adding more custom requests into the system so people can do that more formally than running the requests through email,” he continues. “And it’s all tracked back to that deal, so we can look back on an individual deal and see everything at settlement: the quote, the PO, the invoice information, what requests were completed, whether it was moved to a different location, and it’s the latest and greatest version of the quote that’s out there.” Wright has even added a manager review stage before settlement to ensure that all the correct incentives are included and that there is nothing to resolve before handing it off.

Of course, the payoff comes when all these systems hum along smoothly, generating data about the business for review and analytics.

“We’ve spent a lot of time getting to the point where all the information comes into one system, everybody’s using it and it seems to be working well, so the data is reliable,” says Smith. “For the first time, we can see where everything stands, deals that are complete and how long they are sitting out there. You can see when progress stalls and why, which helps us try to move things through the system quicker.”

Furthermore, deploying Anvil and its O2C system allows dealerships to expand their system integration into other areas such as the sales pipeline and inventory management. “We are spending more time coaching and encouraging our salespeople to manage their active quotes routinely, on a daily basis,” he says. “We’re calling customers back better and we’re better at keeping deals on track. The managers can be really engaged, see what the salespeople are working on and really help them.”

Not only does Anvil make managing these areas easier, but the additional systems integration reveals whole new aspects of how the business operates by making these processes visible to managers.

“I think we do a better job with the customers and getting things through our systems,” says Smith. “So operationally, we’re much more efficient. Thanks to Anvil, we’ve got the information to use, and we can take this even further.”

Learn more about how Anvil brings every detail in your O2C process together and keeps deals progressing toward settlement. READ»