1. Sonepar Management – Prophix story
Operating since: 1998
Head office: Philadelphia (North America), France (global)
Annual revenue: $3.9 billion (North America)
Number of employees: > 4,000
G/L or ERP: Epicor
Company website:
Company background:
Sonepar Management US, operating as Sonepar USA, is a subsidiary of French distribution giant Sonepar ($16 billion+ Euros annual revenue). The US company distributes electrical products and industrial supplies ranging from power cables and light fixtures to security systems and switchgear. Sonepar USA manages a network of a dozen-plus regional distributors across the US and the Caribbean, with individual firms varying in size -- many with vast networks of their own. For example, Hagemeyer North America operates some 500 branches throughout the US and in Canada and Mexico. After a successful sales cycle with two subsidiaries, the contracts were signed with the parent to permit easy roll out to the other Sonepar USA subs. The great news is there are 13 additional subsidiaries beyond Crawford & Irby.
Prophix is initially being installed at two subsidiaries;
Crawford Electric (Texas)
Stuart C. Irby (Mississippi)

2. Sonepar Management – Prophix story
Business problems that lead to evaluating CPM, adopting Prophix:
Both Crawford and Irby were acquired by Sonepar USA. While successful businesses in their own right, they had grown quickly and were using Excel in the case of Crawford and an old version of Outlooksoft at Irby. The existing budgeting, forecasting, and reporting requirements were challenging enough but the new parental reporting requirements became too much to handle and the reporting cycles were too much to handle effectively without other things suffering.
Prophix solution:
At Crawford, Prophix will be used to streamline month end reporting and reporting to the parent company. Operations are highly centralized so initially it will just be a two user system. Later, Prophix may be rolled out to the stores.
At Irby, Prophix will also be used to streamline month end reporting and reporting to the parent company. In addition, Irby plans to use Prophix budgeting to get off the old Outlooksoft, and for other analytics. Irby is more decentralized and so the initial system will have close to 100 users across multiple locations. They will also conduct budgeting and forecasting, in addition to reporting.
Future plans:
Consolidated reporting across many locations
Key business drivers at different locations
Time saving in report collation and distribution, and related analysis
Initially, Prophix will have limited use cases, but with significant room to grow

3. Supporting data: Life cycle Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ New implementation YES
Implementation date: Q1 2014
☐ Preexisting customer
Original implementation date: ________________
☐ Existing customer, upgrading
Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
☐ Professional services
☐ Financial services
☐ Retail YES
☐ Wholesale and distribution YES
☐ Telecommunications
☐ Healthcare
☐ Utilities
☐ Education
☐ Architecture, engineering, and construction
☐ Life science
☐ Transportation and logistics
☐ Manufacturing
☐ High tech
☐ Media and entertainment
☐ Government
☐ Non-profit

4. Supporting data: Solutions built Capabilities used ☐ Budgeting Planned
☐ Automation YES
☐ Forecasting Planned
☐ Prophix Mobile
☐ Reporting YES
☐ Data integration YES
☐ Strategic planning
☐ Business modeling YES
☐ Financial consolidation Planned
☐ Microsoft platform integration
☐ Analysis Planned
☐ Role-based security YES
☐ Profitability analysis
☐ Collaboration YES
☐ Personnel planning Planned
☐ Flexible deployment
☐ Project planning
☐ Ad hoc reporting and visualization YES
☐ Revenue planning
☐ Capital expenditures planning Planned
☐ Reporting and analytics Planned
(dashboards and scorecards)