Headquartered in Pawtucket, R.I.; 11 distribution centers nationwide

Mark Alperin is president and COO of Vertex Fasteners, a master distributor and specialty manufacturer of corrosion resistant standard inch and metric fastener products.

"Selling a solution is a way to differentiate ourselves from the competition," says Alperin. "We haven't recreated the wheel. We've just copied what our customer do for their customers."

As a master distributor, Vertex sells to other distributors. As a solutions provider, Vertex reviews its customer processes—from ordering to delivery—and walks through those processes one step at a time, removing any duplications with their own operations, as well as analyzing costs and productivity.

"Delivering the best service to your customers used to mean on-time and accurate shipments of a good, quality product," says Alperin. "Now, good service means offering solutions. Our sales staff knows how much work it is to secure and keep a customer. They lock in their customers with the service solution.

"For most customers, they'll bounce their business around to different suppliers," he continues. "That is, until you offer them a good solution to their problems. Once customers realize that their greater costs are labor and processes, they look away from price and other productivity gains."

Vertex had a customer that came to them for regular deliveries of 2,000–3,000-pound shipments. Once the pallets arrived at the customer's warehouse, they were unloaded in a haphazard fashion, with no real system. After working with the company and realizing that the packing could be done more efficiently, Vertex began building the pallets based on the products the customer needed the most on the top.

"The item they needed the most would be flagged in our warehouse, and we would be sure it was packed at the top of the pallet," says Alperin. "Products with less urgency were buried, to be unloaded at the customer's discretion. The process was related to better customer service."

Headquartered in St. Louis; 230 locations

Dick Offenbacher is senior vice president of Graybar Electric Co., a distributor of components, equipment and materials for the electrical and telecommunications industries.

"When selling solutions, you have the opportunity to provide a focus for the customer in the way of value-added solutions that will work to the customer's advantage," says Offenbacher. "Raising the bar on performance for customers has been Graybar's focus for as long as I can remember."

One year ago, Graybar announced a new brand strategy and logo, both of which show that Graybar is a vital link in delivering supply chain solutions, Offenbacher says. Graybar took both to their customers with success.

Graybar's automation specialists meet with new customers, interview the customer and their processes, identify areas for solutions, and work with the customer to instate those solutions.

"We are not a typical 'pick, pack and ship' company, as some other distributors are," states Offenbacher. "We go steps further to help customers with the problems and issues beyond the product. From our plan, 'selling solutions' is working; it's not just something we say."

For a large chemical manufacturer, Graybar is going beyond selling product to meet the company's MRO needs, by implementing an integrated supply solution for inventory management. Prior to Graybar's involvement, inventory wasn't tracked as it was being used, supply shortages resulted in expensive downtime, and billing procedures were incomplete. Under the integrated supply agreement, Graybar established an onsite satellite branch with a full-time Graybar supervisor to better manage the day-to-day disbursal of MRO inventory to the customer's maintenance personnel.

Inventory is now bar-coded so it can be scanned as maintenance personnel pick it up. Each scanned purchase is assigned a cost center, department or job code, downloaded into Graybar's database, and compared against minimum/maximum quantities to determine whether or not replenishment is needed.

According to Graybar, not only does this solution allow for more efficient inventory tracking to monitor and replace outgoing supplies, it also provides a means for the customer to have one monthly billing summary—broken down by cost center/department/job code—to better track its supply expenditures.

Graybar also helped the customer configure its company intranet site to track the transactions for regular inventory updates.

This solution also provides the customer with Graybar's resources to keep plenty of stock on hand. If a product isn't available on site, Graybar is able to leverage its supplier relationships to provide that material by the next day. Prior to the supply agreement, the manufacturer didn't have access to those supplier contacts or capabilities, says the company.