Pro-Tech Cleans Up Software System with Rootstock Cloud ERP

If you live anywhere in “snow country”, you’re very familiar with Pro-Tech products, even though you may not realize it. After a winter storm, it’s quite likely that your local big box store’s parking lot will cleaned out with a wheel loader or skid steer sporting a Pro-Tech Sno-Pusher. Fact is, Pro-Tech is North America’s largest containment plow manufacturer. As a testimony to their size, the company employs 30 full-time welders. Thousands of companies prefer one or more of their 80+ models and keeping track of manufacturing parts, labor, inventory and orders had become a real nightmare for the company.

“We had disparate systems,” remembers Chris Muto, Pro-Tech sales operation manager. “We had spreadsheets, a CRM system, another brand of ERP, whiteboards and none of them were connected. To get out a report or access information was inefficient and taking way too many clicks of a mouse.”

From the very beginning of their search for a new ERP and an integrated enterprise system, Muto and his team knew they wanted to go with a cloud solution.

“Cloud is the future of computing,” attests Muto. “It provides better accessibility. From anywhere, our people would have access to our systems to check on order status or whatever information they, their customer or vendor needed. Plus, the cloud would also give us an easier, less expensive implementation. The costs of on-premise systems would be eliminated.”

To begin their search for a cloud ERP, Muto and his team used the Internet and began reaching out to cloud ERP providers, looking for companies that would be a good fit. When a good possibility popped up, Muto would phone a company representative. They initially settled on NetSuite, but the more they looked, the more they were concerned about the depth of the software on the manufacturing side of the ERP. Then, they had an epiphany of sorts.

“All along, we were planning on using Salesforce for our CRM,” says Muto. “Our Salesforce people suggested that we look at cloud ERPs developed on the Salesforce Platform. In reviewing Rootstock, we found that Rootstock really understood manufacturing and its pricing was very competitive. Overall, this was the top cloud ERP we looked at and selected it.”

“As a result of installing Rootstock ERP, we are better serving our customers,” Muto reports. “When our customer service department gets a request, we are able to respond quickly, whether the inquiry is about shipping charges, available inventory (which used to be physically counted almost daily), or other questions. Our sales and customer service department can now forward an invoice or packing slip with the touch of a button.”

Muto likes to relate an interesting side benefit to having an integrated system. Shortly after installing the system, Pro-Tech brought on a new sales representative. Using their new system, Pro-Tech can now teach people new to the organization how their process flow works, quickly and easily. Instead of having to jump from system to system, the team is able to stay in the same place, making the training much simpler to conduct and easier for the new employees to comprehend.

Pro-Tech sales representatives appreciate being able to refer to sales orders while on the road and, as a result, have found the entire sales order system much easier to use. In the past, Pro-Tech did not create work orders or inventory reports. Since implementing the new system, they have found doing both is actually quite easy on Rootstock.

Muto also likes the information he has available. Rootstock cloud ERP will plan, track and cost inventory items by customer, customer/project or contract. Once a project budget is set, actual labor, material and other charges are tracked and visible in real-time. Up-to-date project actual vs. project budget numbers are just a click away.

Switching to an integrated enterprise system with best-of-breed software solutions, including cloud ERP, on the Salesforce platform is paying dividends for Pro-Tech.

“Our lead times are much better and our business processes have been streamlined,” Muto acknowledges.