Founded in 1917 E.P. Barrus is a leading distributor in the powered products market.  E.P. Barrus is the exclusive UK & Irish distributor for most brands in the marine, lawn & garden, industrial and power vehicle markets, representing products such as Mercury Outboards, Yanmar,  Massey Ferguson, MTD, John Deere Engines and Hyosung Motorcycles.  Maintaining a leading position as a major multi-product and multi-marque distributor, E.P. Barrus  invests continually in technology to provide optimal aftermarket support for its wide product range.  It sells to a 1500-strong dealer network for whom the provision of spare parts and supporting technical data are an integral part of the commercial relationship.

Given Barrus’ extensive product range and the scale of its dealer business, the company needed an aftermarket service solutions company capable of implementing a dealer portal that would support an integrated catalogue and act as a single source of aftermarket information on a vast scale. Previously up to 15 separately authored CDs were required to support the almost 10 million engine part choices that Barrus needs to offer.  These CDs were expensive to produce, ship and were soon out of date.  Consequently, dealer usage of them was relatively low in turn driving greater hands on and costly aftermarket support from the Barrus aftermarket team. 

Using the LANSA EDI framework, Epitomy created an E. P. Barrus dealer parts portal. Through this portal dealers can order parts, check stock availability, track order status and view order history. A distinctive feature of the portal is that dealers can search for parts without having to know the part number. Through a process of progressive visual selection they are able to reach the part that they require. Given the extensive parts list this graphical ability is of particular value saving time and reducing order error.

The portal, supported by Epitomy, uses web services to request validation of the dealer number in Barrus’ dealer system. The dealer typically creates a part list using web services to obtain up to date stock and price information from Barrus. Once the parts list has been completed, web services are used to pass this list back into Barrus’ dealer website where the parts are added to the dealers order page. Dealers are able to switch between the portal and their own site at any time.  As both are similar in look and feel so that the switch appears seamless to the dealer.

The solution is at the very core of the business reducing both the labour intensity required to deliver aftermarket support whilst simultaneously increasing E. P. Barrus aftermarket service levels.  Now, 80% of E. P. Barrus’ parts business is processed through this portal. All data relating to parts is linked, encrypted and stored in a single data repository. This makes the parts identification process quick and accurate, removing costly duplication and wasted effort caused by inaccurate selection and leading to high levels of returns. The Epitomy created solution has been developed on the Microsoft .Net platform, future proofing the investment and enabling high resolution imagery, fast search routines and efficient translation referencing.