Newport Gliders Rock With Sage PFW
Five miles from the Canadian border in the woods of Vermont, Newport Furniture Parts has hewn a unique niche-glider rocking chairs. It makes gliders that swivel or recline, finely crafted from wood or upholstered over metal. The company also manufactures wooden chair legs, arms, tabletops and panels. It prides itself on being the home of the original glider and advises consumers, “Don’t settle on the competition.”
Newport Furniture Parts has been family owned since 1963. When the second generation assumed ownership in 1991, the movement to full mechanization began. Today the company uses computerized numeric controller technology for “no-touch” cutting of maple, red oak, cherry, pine, ash, and walnut panels into furniture parts. The 3,000 parts it runs through the mill are all tracked electronically with bar coding.
Automating business functions made sense, too, so Newport implemented Platinum for DOS accounting software, and then upgraded to Sage PFW ERP in 1996. “The beauty of Sage PFW is that we created an end-to-end system that integrates perfectly with the shop floor,” says David Laforce, vice president of Newport Furniture Parts. “Now all of our operations are linked through Sage PFW, including wood inventory, work in progress and finished goods. The system even tracks production times of individual products for us. It’s fantastic!”
When Newport Furniture Parts purchased a panel manufacturing business 10 miles down the road, Laforce discovered how well Sage PFW performs in a multi-company environment. “I can sit in my office and bring up Sage PFW information from the other plant, or vice versa,” he says. “I could also dial up the same information from anywhere in the world. It’s the ultimate in offsite management.”
Furnishing a CRM Solution
Last year Newport decided to strengthen the glider portion of its business from 20 to 50 percent of total volume. This meant seriously boosting customer relations capabilities. Newport’s phone representatives and salespeople lacked up-to-date information on customers, and were therefore unable to provide speedy answers to issues or make informed buying recommendations. A self-confessed techie, Laforce vowed to find an electronic remedy.
“Our sales have gone up by 25 percent since we implemented Sage PFW with ADAPT—all without adding a single employee.”
The Finishing Touch
Laforce contacted his Sage Software reseller and learned about ADAPT, a customer-vendor-relationship management system (CRM/VRM) with real-time interface to Sage PFW. Now he has the best of both worlds-the robust business management functions from Sage PFW his company depends on, plus enterprise-class CRM that delivers timely customer data to the people who need it.
When a furniture store calls Newport, staff members can now click a button and easily bring up order data, sales history, and custom manufacturing requirements, all stored within Sage PFW. This information allows reps to increase sales. “One glance at a customer’s ordering patterns tells us why their sales are high or low,” says Laforce. “We can almost guarantee they’ll sell more chairs by suggesting that they carry our top five items.”
The same tactics work well at trade shows. Newport’s president brings up ADAPT on his laptop when customers visit the booth. He can recommend a shift in product mix or resolve issues on the spot, thanks to having instant access to Sage PFW business data.
The ADAPT-based customer-relations strategy has proved to be an unquestioned success and a money-saver as well. “Our sales have gone up by 25 percent since we implemented ADAPT with Sage Sage PFW-all without adding a single employee,” Laforce notes.
Laforce is eagerly awaiting ADAPT’s introduction of a PDA interface. He foresees independent sales representatives sending live updates from the field, telling the company right away if they need a fabric or wood sample, informing Newport headquarters of problems with deliveries or product quality, or adding notes to the customer database.
“Sage PFW is the greatest,” says Laforce. “They’re always improving it and coming out with new options like ADAPT that add value to our investment. I would never recommend anything but Sage PFW for a midsized, growing company like ours.”
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