How Wright Implement Started Bringing Deals to Settlement Faster
Wright Implement needed a new workflow solution. Anvil’s Order to Cash feature gave Wright’s even more flexibility in their process.
Order to Cash: The Right Fit for Stronger Sales
Formed in 2019 by acquiring several smaller dealerships, the northeast division of United Ag & Turf needed a business technology solution to bring cohesion to its various locations. After researching the available options, United Ag & Turf’s management team chose Anvil Enterprise – a centralized CRM and inventory management application built on the powerful Salesforce platform.
The new dealership brought together 25 turf-based John Deere locations. From a systems standpoint, very few of these dealerships used the available John Deere business resources. And virtually none of them used more sophisticated technology, according to Brian Marshall, United Ag & Turf corporate systems director.
Addressing More Needs
“We knew out of the gate that we needed something in place to centralize invoicing and settlement processes, and everything that goes along with them,” says Marshall. “From past experience, I knew the value a workflow system brings to the table, but I also knew that I did not want the staff working in multiple software platforms.”
Furthermore, as a newly formed dealership, the company did not have a “This is the way we have always done things” mindset to overcome.
“For us, building this company was a clean slate,” he says. “We are very process oriented, and we were able to lay our business processes out the way we wanted them to work to suit our needs.” The dealership needed an adaptable solution that could support these established processes.
Marshall also recognized that as a rapidly growing entity, United Ag & Turf would evolve over time. These changes would continually put new demands on the business system. The right solution would have the headroom to evolve with the dealership.
“What we needed at 25 locations is different than what we need now at 50-plus locations,” says Marshall. “It’s ever-changing for us. Add to that the complexity of managing a second division. From a back-end standpoint, these divisions need to be handled as separate entities, but still piggyback onto the same business system.”
Finally, the bulk of the business was turf-based sales, which required minimal CRM functionality. It did, however, need a strong back-end system to accommodate the high volume of sales during peak seasons, ensuring smooth operations throughout the dealership.
“We call our peak season the ’90-day War’,” says Marshall. “It’s three months of unrelenting turf sales, and we can’t afford to have a business system that slows things down.”
In short, United Ag & Turf needed a solution that could:
- Centralize and standardize processes across locations
- Unify business systems into one efficient, integrated tool
- Promote faster sales processing
- Offer enough flexibility to adapt to unique processes
- Possess ample capacity for growth and expansion
- Improve efficiency of admin staff to handle growth without requiring extra resources
“Out of all the systems out there, Anvil was the right move for United Ag & Turf,” says Marshall.
Continuously Reaping Dividends
Anvil promptly addressed United Ag & Turf’s primary concern by providing a scalable Order to Cash (O2C) feature that seamlessly united their geographically dispersed operations. Equally significant, this feature allowed both the sales and admin teams to work within the same system, enhancing efficiency and collaboration.
“The time savings for both teams is incredible,” says Marshall. “Instead of having to collect, scan, and email over all the paperwork, once a deal is signed sales reps can simply mark the quote as sold and send it straight to the admin team. Everything is already put together in the system by that point.”
The admin team sees the same boost in efficiency, as they receive the order packet.
“Invoicing doesn’t need to print everything out, organize it, and verify that it’s all there. You can see it all readily in Anvil,” he explains. “Making the entire process visible has helped us across the dealership. Sales, invoicing, settlement, and management can all see what is happening through the whole process. If something gets stuck, everyone knows why.”
Marshall also values the flexibility Anvil provides the dealership from a process perspective: “Instead of having to work in a one-size-fits-all box, the Anvil team tailored the O2C feature to fit the processes we laid out. And it has been flexible enough to keep up as we continually improve our business processes.”
Overall, Anvil’s O2C feature has empowered United Ag & Turf’s team members to handle more volume, on both the sales and admin sides of the process. “We’ve found that Anvil gave us the capacity to grow our locations without adding resources,” he says. Consequently, this leads to an overall increase in the dealership’s profitability.
Enhancing ROI Through System Integration
Beyond the O2C feature, Marshall strongly values Anvil’s ability to simplify operations by consolidating as much functionality as possible into a single business system. “Forcing the staff to jump back and forth between two or three software platforms to do their job is counterproductive,” he says. “If you can keep people in one place, the happier everyone is going to be.”
Although Anvil started that process for United by bringing together the CRM, John Deere EQUIP business system, Inventory, and O2C functionality and data, the dealership continues to move operational tasks to their Anvil platform.
“For example, the Anvil team helped us adapt a feature Deere developed that allows dealers to process an equipment deposit.” says Marshall. “We can now fully process any payment through Anvil. That was the last piece of the puzzle we needed to completely remove our salespeople from outside systems. They now work only in the Anvil platform to complete their daily tasks.”
Additionally, he sees much more potential for further systems unification to bring significant savings to the dealership.
“I have a list of ideas as long as my arm that I’d like to implement,” says Marshall. “We currently pay for three different software services right now that I know Anvil can replace at a cost savings approaching $250,000 a year.”
Bringing systems together can have a powerful impact on your operations and your bottom line. Find out what Anvil can do to increase profitability and efficiency at your dealership.
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