Fromm Electric, an electrical distributor supplying products and services to the Mid-Atlantic industrial, commercial construction, and residential markets, was migrating to Infor CSD from Infor's SXE on-prem in 2022-2023 and was looking for a platform provider who could meet their deadline.
We recently interviewed Stephen Miller, Vice President, Information Systems & Strategy at Fromm, about the transition to Kodaris.
Watch the video to listen in on our conversation, or check out the slightly edited version of the transcript for clarity of our conversation.
Interviewer:
Tell me about Kodaris. What is it, and what's it doing for you?
Stephen Miller:
Kodaris has become our provider of our customer portal. And they also provide to us invoice and statement publication and distribution to customers that still want to get both electronic invoices and statements and paper through traditional mail.
Interviewer:
Great. And tell me how long you've been using it, the history of how you took it on, and why you decided to choose Kodaris.
Stephen Miller:
So in 2022, we made the decision as a company to move our business system from Infor's SXE on-prem to their cloud version, which is called Cloud Suite Distribution. And at the time, we had a provider of invoice and statement services and a customer portal that really couldn't meet our timeline of implementation to move to the Cloud.
So, we started looking for other options, and one of our partners that helps us manage the business system suggested that we talk to Kodaris. So, we started to talk to them—because we had a very hard deadline based on the fact that we had a lot of hardware on site, that was either going to be out of warranty or out of support, so we couldn't sacrifice not hitting that deadline.
And Kodaris came to us and said, with 100% assurance, that we're going to meet your deadline no matter what. So, that was very reassuring to us. Really, one of the main reasons we chose Kodaris was we want to elevate both our customers’ and our associates' experience. We want to make their job easy. We want to retain customers, and we want to retain our associates too. In today's world, they expect technology to make their lives easier, and Kodaris helps us with that.
Interviewer:
When you were looking at different options, what was it that distinguished Kodaris or what led you to choose them?
Stephen Miller:
Well, the fact that they're really like a development partner. You get to help them develop their software, and then you also get the benefit of them developing the software for other customers.
So it's like having your own development company and the support, but not really.
Interviewer:
So it almost sounds like they're upgrading their software, but you don't have to pay for the upgrades?
Stephen Miller:
Kodaris has a very unique business approach. Once they develop something, you get what they've already developed. It's not like you're paying for an à la carte menu. You're not paying for every little thing that you'd like to do or not to do.
So, they keep expanding the product, and it's almost like a community of customers benefiting from the software development. With the monthly release notes, I think the last one I got was 60 pages long. So, they do a tremendous amount of development work and have been doing that for 10 years.
Interviewer:
Tell me about when you implemented it, and how that went, and what your impressions were about how things were going.
Stephen Miller:
Yeah, we had a lot of structural meetings upfront as we got to our November of 2023 deadline. Again, like Kodaris said, 100% we're going to meet the deadline. And we worked as a team to ensure that we would get everything done and needed to get done, both from a technical standpoint, which was invoices and statements, having the portal ready, because we were going to no longer have the portal from our previous provider available to us.
And if you want to make your bosses not so happy, you don't send out any way to collect money. So it's not a very good business practice not to be able to send out invoices and collect money.
Interviewer:
So it sounds like when Kodaris promised to meet this deadline, they were pretty reliable. Can you talk about in general, like how they are in terms of following through and delivering?
Stephen Miller:
Yes, they've always followed through on delivering what they've said they would. And it was a collaborative effort. A lot of the forms that we use need to be customized to our needs, whether it's logos or just the format that we do things. And again, like I said, we worked with them all during the development process to make sure that was all done for our November deadline.
Interviewer:
How challenging was it for your people to start working with the new system?
Stephen Miller:
Well, change is never easy, and there's always pushback because it's just different. But Kodaris provides an operational portal for our folks to work with, and they have embraced using that tool.
And again, they were reluctant at the beginning, but they found it fairly easy to work inside the tool.
Interviewer:
What do they like about it?
Stephen Miller:
It provides all the information that they need. It's sort of like having the business system. If I can use Tony's name, I think he calls it ‘ERP Lite’. So you really have access to all the ERP information inside of their portal. So it makes it pretty much one-stop shopping, especially for our accounts receivable folks.
Interviewer:
How about the interface and the look and feel of it?
Stephen Miller:
So, they were really good about branding it. Our marketing folks are very cognizant of Fromm's image and how we use the Fromm colors in our marketing material. And Kodaris was able to take all that. And admittedly, our customer portal looks like we designed it, not Kodaris designing it. So it's very, we like to call it ‘very Fromm’.
Interviewer:
Is it easy to use and intuitive and well-designed?
Stephen Miller:
Yes, yes. It's very customizable for the user.
They can basically select the columns and the things that they want to see. So, it's very specific to the individual.
Interviewer:
What does this enable you to do, or do better than you used to do?
Stephen Miller:
Well, our goal is to really let our customers self-serve. And we want to give them as much information and tools because in today's world, just like you want to pay your bills online, we want our customers to pay the bills online. We want to make it easy for them. And it is really that simple. It's clicking the boxes and saying, “Hey, I want to pay these invoices.” And it flows, and it makes their life easy as well.
Interviewer:
If somebody that you knew from another company was kind of having the same issues, how would you go about convincing them that this is how they should go?
Stephen Miller:
Actually, I've done that already. I think I've sent quite a few of our colleagues the Kodaris way. Again, in the software world sometimes a lot of people over promise and under deliver.
It is refreshing to have somebody to actually do what they say they're going to do. And I can say that with Kodaris.
Not everything gets done quite as quickly as you'd like it to, but it's a development process and there's always technical pieces behind the scenes that may cause delays, but they do do what they say they're going to do.
Interviewer:
What about the people there? What are they like? How do you relate to them? How do they respond to you?
Stephen Miller:
The team's been good. They have always assigned a project manager, for lack of a better term. So, we have somebody that really manages the relationship and is making sure that our requests are getting taken care of. And if something becomes urgent, they're able to elevate that inside their company. They recently instituted a ticketing process, which is all online now. So you can create tickets. You can drop in files. So, they’re benefitting from their own software development in their own company.
Interviewer:
So, you say they're more responsive than other companies that you've dealt with in the past? Are they sort of pleasantly, surprisingly responsive, or how would you put it?
Stephen Miller:
I guess it really depends on the situation. Some things I know just are not that important. So they take longer to develop. And they have to set their priorities. And maybe sometimes my priority is not as much of a priority as theirs. And that's okay.
It is definitely a partnership. We don't feel like just a customer. We're not just a number to them. We're not a small company. But we're not a huge company either. And it is nice to be able to work with a company that really listens to what your needs are and is trying to provide solutions.
Now, sometimes they take a little longer. Maybe it's not exactly how you would expect the results, but there's always technical limitations that impact them. I understand that. We have a relationship, and we expect it to carry on for some time.
