MCR Safety Customer Story

BACKGROUND

MCR Safety is a leading international distributor of personal protective equipment (PPE) headquartered in the Memphis area. Before automating with Esker, the company was using another sales order management solution that wasn’t able to deliver the value and functionality needed to keep up with business. Even with the automation tool, MCR’s order management process was inundated with manual touch points that hindered processing speed and workflow efficiency. A lot of orders still needed to be printed, sent for review, scanned and then manually entered into the SAP® system, along with other necessary documents. In addition, the company had incredibly limited visibility into the order processing workflow, in which every step was tracked through spreadsheets.

After implementing esker, we were able to save costs by displacing the support and expenses associated with the other automation product.
Tim Thomas | Vice President of Information Technology

It became obvious to MCR that there were better, more streamlined ways to handle managing orders and subsequent documents. Because an automation tool was already being used, the company initially began searching for a document management tool to add to its current infrastructure. MCR soon realized that a more robust level of automation could take order management efficiency to a new level, and that’s when it turned to Esker. “Once we dug a little deeper into what we needed, we decided to look for something that would provide a higher level of automation in addition to just document management,” said Tim Thomas, Vice President of Information Technology of MCR Safety. “That’s what led us down the path to Esker.”

SOLUTION

One functionality MCR Safety prioritized when choosing a new order management solution was the ability to easily integrate with its SAP system, which is what made Esker a standout among competitors. “Other products we looked at either required an additional cost for separate hardware that allowed their platform to integrate with SAP,” said Thomas. “That was a big advantage with Esker — the integration was already a part of the solution.”

The chat function of Esker’s Order Management solution also played a key role in MCR’s solution choice. Other providers it considered charged extra for chat capabilities, but Esker’s came standard in the solution, incurring no additional cost for MCR. “We’re now able to track conversations with both customers and the Customer Service department and tie all of that information back to a purchase order, which is great,” said Latoya Sharp, IT Systems Engineer at MCR Safety.

There were times when we had ideas about functions we needed, and Esker just added it to the product rather than it being an extra customization. I think that’s a positive and shows that Esker listens to its user community and is willing to add those kinds of things.
Tim Thomas | Vice President of Information Technology

Esker’s Order Management solution was particularly effective in alleviating CSRs’ overwhelming workloads. Director of Customer Care Deborah Buck wanted CSRs to have more time to spend with customers, but they were burning out and frequently working overtime to keep up — adding headcount felt necessary and inevitable. MCR also valued that Esker did not promise to reduce headcount like many of its competitors did, but instead gave employees more time to do high-value tasks. MCR wanted to equip its staff with tools that made jobs easier, less stressful and enhanced performance. Esker allowed them to do exactly that.

One of my goals for customer service department was to find a program that would allow our customer service agents the ability to process orders in an efficient manner and provide them more time to assist our customers and sales team,” said Buck. “Esker has provided that enhancement to our department. Training new and existing employees on the Esker format has been seamless and has effectively reduced our error rate. The messaging capabilities within the order processing solution is one of the best enhancements, allowing all agents access to easy communication with our customers. The ability to retrieve previous orders within the Esker software or directly from SAP is also another helpful feature for our department and other business units.

BENEFITS

After a smooth and swift implementation of Esker’s solution, MCR Safety is reaping major benefits from its new and improved order management process. By replacing its previous automation tool with Esker, the company has been able to:

• Improve communication with customers and internally thanks to Esker’s chat capabilities
• Strengthen relationships with customers, as CSRs are able to dedicate more time to them
• Maintain headcount, no longer needing to add staff to keep up with workload
• Simplify and streamline workflows with visibility into every step
• Accelerate order processing while reducing the amount of errors
• Improve job satisfaction by eliminating tedious, manual data entry and freeing up time for value-added activities