In the early 1980s, Marvin Sensenig dismantled the engine of his lawn mower atop his kitchen table, seeking to understand the intricacies of how it works and how to keep it running at peak performance. A couple years later he turned his “hobby” into an official side business: Sensenig’s Repair and Sales. As more and more people heard about Sensenig’s, it became Marvin’s full-time job.
“Marvin has always had a good reputation for taking care of people. So that gets out. People are sharing word-of-mouth that they had a good experience.” – Dylan Newswanger, Co-Owner and Operations Manager
Today, Sensenig’s Repair employs 6 full-time team members, plus a few people for part-time help during the busy spring season. The business has moved out of Marvin’s garage and is now located along East Farmersville Road in Ephrata, serving the local community there.
Their growth quickly began to test the limits of their internal processes.
“Before EBMS, everything was done with just paperwork – orders and invoices and trying to keep track of inventory.”
Several issues began to arise in this system: from being unable to read a co-worker’s handwriting, to information being copied wrong from the work order to the invoice, to just losing paperwork altogether. It also became increasingly difficult to keep track of their inventory and financials. They tried to solve these challenges with a basic accounting system, but many of the issues persisted.
“We want to be a reliable place people can bring their equipment to. There’s a lot of shops out there that have a bad reputation by not providing the services that people are paying for. So our main goal is to be a business of integrity, a place that people can trust is getting the work done well and makes it as painless as possible.”
Yet with fragmented and manual systems, it became a challenge to keep things running smoothly. They worked hard to make sure the customer didn’t feel the impact, but that only put more strain on their team. It was time for an ERP.
Adopting EBMS (Koble’s ERP platform) as their single system of truth was a game-changer for their company.
“For us, everything is on EBMS. That’s strictly what we use. It keeps track of what parts we have in stock and what they cost, the bills that need to be paid, and the money that’s in the account. There’s no double entry and it keeps everything in real time, and there’s a lot less communication that has to happen between employees to get the same job done.”
Sensenig’s Repair and Sales started off simple with their use of EBMS, using it to connect their workflow, keep better track of their inventory, and get a good handle on their financials. As they continued to grow, they also expanded their usage of the tool to help them achieve their goals.
For example, their shipping process was a little cumbersome. To find shipping prices, they used to go to the websites of different shipping services, enter all the package information and customer information manually, see which service had the best price, then print the paper shipping label and try to fold it and tape it to the package.
“We added integrating shipping, so now we can print shipping labels right off the invoice in EBMS. We’re able to rate shop, print out a label, and stick it right on the package. It’s saved us time, and it gives our packages a cleaner look overall.”
They’ve made similar improvements to how they handle parts inventory and sales.
“Since adding barcoding to our inventory, its been a cleaner way to store our inventory. We can put a sticker on the piece, which has the location and part number right on it. It’s been a huge help in the showroom ringing up items as people are pulling parts off the shelf. We don’t have to manually enter the part number at the sales counter.”
Now, they’re looking at how they might be able to add inventory their website and allow customers to buy online - another step in using systems to support the processes that work best for their people.
Paper, pens, spreadsheets, and simple accounting solutions can work well for garage-based businesses as they grow. That’s how Marvin started his company when it took off. But when a company grows, the simplicity of that “system” quickly makes operations unmanageably complex.
“I definitely wouldn’t want to do it without EBMS, because we’d need another whole person on staff just to keep up with the paperwork.”