Successes - LaForce, Inc.
Top Midwest Manufacturer Achieves New Efficiencies with Fortis

LaForce, Inc. is the Midwest’s leading distributor of door hardware and a manufacturer of custom hollow metal frames and doors. In addition to working with general contractors and architects for commercial construction, the company assists building owners in maintaining their existing structures. LaForce also offers a broad spectrum of decorative hardware for high-end residential applications. The corporate office and manufacturing plant are in Green Bay, Wisconsin with branches in Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati.

Challenge
LaForce wanted to share operational information more efficiently and integrate documents with their business applications. “We had ERP and other applications that manage business data, but our processes require supporting source documents that were stored in paper files. That model doesn’t scale for a multi-branch business,” says Jeff McGlachlin, vice president at LaForce.

The company needed a system that could handle multiple document types including architectural plans and specifications, supplier catalogs and cutsheets, supplier price quotes, estimating reports and emails. LaForce chose Fortis because the software is both user-friendly and met the needs of their IT department. They also wanted implementation expertise and ongoing support from a local company which is provided by Westbrook partner MBM, based in Appleton, Wisconsin. MBM has expertise in design, implementation and support of Fortis document management solutions and provides ongoing business analysis, upgrades and technical support. “We wanted a local document management consulting team who could be on site and would take the time to learn our business. MBM helped make the integration and customization of Fortis work smoothly for us,” says McGlachlin.

Estimating is a very paper-intensive process. Before implementing Fortis document management software, LaForce maintained paper records for every bid. “On big projects, such as a hospital, these folders could be 16 inches thick,” says McGlachlin. “Over time people change their minds about things, so there may be new sets of plans and addenda -- and that’s just the information coming from the outside world. Every one of those changes goes through the associated product line department at LaForce,” he says. “You could multiply the amount of paper that accumulates by the number of times changes occurred. It was challenging to keep it all organized.”

Solution
Using Fortis, LaForce captures approximately 7,400 documents and about 12,000 plans and specifications per month for their estimating department. Working with Fortis has improved communication between the branch offices and the main office in Green Bay.

“The estimating department is in Green Bay, but our sales force is local to each branch. They are the face to the customer and need to know the details as the estimate is developed,” McGlachlin says. Before implementing Fortis, LaForce staff would make copies of the estimating documents and overnight or fax them to the branches. There was a delay in getting access to the information, and time and money spent on faxing or copying and mailing documents.

“The big plus is everyone can go to one place, Fortis, and look at the same information from any location,” he says. Fortis is integrated with LaForce’s bid management application and by hitting a hot key users can access all the paperwork associated with a particular job.

“Each job that we store in Fortis becomes a living system. And we have the ease of emailing or faxing documents directly from Fortis without generating paper copies,” explains Programmer/Analyst Rob Russell, Fortis Administrator at LaForce.

LaForce renders a variety of different file types into Fortis, including those, proprietary formats such as VPC, PLN, and DWG. “We convert documents into Tiff images which can be marked up and annotated in Fortis. Users can then export the Tiff or print to PDF to create an email,” McGlachlin says. In contrast, PDFs can only be annotated with a full version of Adobe® Acrobat® “The cost of Fortis is offset by the savings we’re gained by eliminating the need to purchase more full versions of Adobe,” he explains.

LaForce recently implemented PlanetPress, a transactional and variable content document printing software solution, used in conjunction with Fortis and iSeries software. PlanetPress generates preprinted, bill-of-lading forms that are signed by LaForce’s customers upon receipt of a delivery. The signed bills-of-lading are bar coded, indexed and scanned into Fortis. Then a backend process runs against the data in the iSeries system to populate the remaining index fields in Fortis. Once the signed bill-of-lading is scanned, all other steps in the process are automated.

“The critical thing for us is to be able to capture the customer signature. Our staff likes the system because it means no more filing cabinets and hunting down documents,” Russell says. LaForce uses PlanetPress to create forms for invoices, customer quotes, and contracts. Plans are underway to automate these processes to achieve additional efficiencies through the combined use of PlanetPress and Fortis.

LaForce also put supplier catalogs and cut sheets that describe their products into Fortis. “In some of our offices, there were shelves of different catalogs containing technical specifications and pricing information. Now that these documents are in Fortis, they can look up information by part number, or by product and get the right information immediately, rather than spending time paging through a book,” Russell says.

LaForce is planning to use Fortis in their contracts department as well. Once a contract is awarded, new plans, records from engineering that determine which products LaForce will supply for the job and other associated documents will be archived in Fortis. “A number of departments use these files, and with Fortis they can share information without leaving their desks,” McGlachlin says. “We will be implementing Fortis in many other areas of our business including retail and accounting. As departments have recognized the business advantages gained by our already implemented systems, they continue to suggest new projects to add to the list.”

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