How TRA Snow & Sun Tripled Revenue with the Help of Acumatica Manufacturing Edition

Founded in 1996 by Terry and Laurie Anderson, family-and-American-owned TRA Snow & Sun manufactures and distributes custom snow retention engineered solutions for homes, commercial buildings, and more. The growing manufacture offers high-quality products made from superior materials and provides tailored services to contractors, architects, builders, and homeowners, but prior to becoming an Acumatica customer, TRA Snow & Sun struggled with getting operational insights, providing orders on time, and tracking inventory.

“We were often months behind in inventory and never had a real accurate picture of what current inventory levels were, which was extremely frustrating,” says Jake Anderson, Chief Financial Officer.

But the TRA Snow & Sun team didn’t wallow in their frustration. Instead, they fixed the problem—with Acumatica.

TRA Snow & Sun Success Hampered by Lack of Technology

TRA Snow & Sun’s journey to becoming an internationally recognized provider of snow guards, snow fences (or snow rail systems), and flexible roof ventilation and flashings began when Terry, a Utah-based concrete tile-roof consultant with years of experience solving roof problems, decided to travel to Europe with the goal of discovering how to prevent damage caused by sliding snow and ice. What he learned changed how people in the U.S. and Canada dealt with accumulated snow and ice on their roofs and the dangers that came with it.

“He found that in America, we do things backwards,” says Laurie in TRA Snow & Sun’s company history video. “We think we need to get snow off the roof, and basically, throughout the world, they think, ‘Leave it on.’”

The leave-it-on mindset revolved around the idea that allowing it to melt in place will not only provide an insulation barrier that reduces energy loss but also stop big chunks of snow and ice from falling onto and damaging anything located below (e.g., property, landscaping, and people). Seeing the wisdom of allowing snow to remain on the roof, thus melting slowly and falling in smaller, more controlled flows, Terry decided to create his own snow retention devices for all types of roofs, each one custom-made and engineered for every client’s unique needs.

That’s when TRA Snow & Sun was born, and Terry, after several more trips to Europe, decided to add flashing and ventilation products as well as solar mounting and rail systems to the manufacturing company’s product line up with. With its unique and expanding offerings, TRA Snow & Sun was growing, but its growth was being checked by the company’s weak technology foundation: a disconnected mix of QuickBooks, Salesforce, and spreadsheets.

Chief Operating Officer Ben Anderson explains further. “We would take an order from a customer, input it into Salesforce, and then we would physically print out a copy of what was in Salesforce, make sure that it was all accurate in QuickBooks, and would walk it over to our floor manager and hand them a piece of paper.”

From Lagging to Leading with Acumatica Manufacturing Edition

TRA Snow & Sun’s fragmented solutions and paper-based order and inventory management processes resulted in significant delays. Says Ben, “[We] would get severely behind on building orders and adjusting our inventory. At times, we were six months behind on inventory.”

To get back on track, the TRA Snow & Sun team knew they needed to streamline their sales, quoting, production, and invoicing operations, so they decided to implement an all-in-one platform that would act as their single source of truth. They evaluated several ERP options, including Acumatica, and Acumatica’s user-friendly interface, flexibility, open API, and unlimited user pricing put it at the top of the list.

“It seemed like Acumatica was on the rise, growing, and progressive with an open-source community where we didn’t feel like we were going to be put into a bucket or roped in. And that the company would grow with us,” says Jake.

With the help of Acumatica partner Premier Tech Partners, TRA Snow & Sun implemented Acumatica Manufacturing Edition, and the benefits, according to Ben, have been “pretty huge.”

“The tracking of live data for our customers has been the biggest thing. Our customers have daily notifications or immediate responses from an order being placed,” he says. “When a process is completed on the production floor, we’re checking the steps and its live time, so my sales team can actually see that data and say this is where it is on the floor. ‘I can let my customer know this is where it’s at.’”

In addition to supplying accurate, real-time order information and improving customer satisfaction, the manufacturing company also experienced a jump in revenue while also reducing its labor requirements. “We used to have two people working in finances in 2018, and now we have doubled or tripled our revenue, thanks to Acumatica and many other processes, and we have one finance controller that’s able to handle that.”

Growing revenues threefold and operating more efficiently are not the only benefits TRA Sun & Snow have gained from implementing Acumatica and eliminating its manual paper processes. The team has also reduced lead time for complex orders from 3.5 weeks to 10 days and is enjoying an affordable, user-friendly, and integrated solution.

“We’re not waiting for anybody to do anything because its instant information,” says Devin Hancock, Inside Sales Manager. “We don’t have to physically get up and walk somewhere to get information when it’s clearly there in front of us.”

And for David Maughan, Chief Executive Officer of Premier Tech Partners, the biggest benefit he sees for TRA Snow & Sun is having a comprehensive business management solution that can keep up with the thriving manufacturer.

“They are no longer inhibited by technology,” he says. “And they also recognize that as they grew, Acumatica was also going to grow and improve.”

Acumatica: Built to Meet Growing Manufacturers’ Needs

Selecting Acumatica’s manufacturing ERP and taking advantage of its advanced, integrated applications has delivered the TRA Snow & Sun team an incredible return on their investment.

“When we look back, especially after five or six years, the payout is there. There’s no question,” Jake says. “Improvements we’ve made in production, CRM, better follow ups, better communication with our customers. Acumatica is built for this.”

To find out if Acumatica is built for your manufacturing needs, download our free manufacturing resources, such as our Manufacturing Management System Evaluation Checklist to see how Acumatica rates against our competition or our QuickBooks Migration Guide for Manufacturing to see how Acumatica can revolutionize your manufacturing operations.

You can also customize your manufacturing software package with our Acumatica Manufacturing Pricing Calculator as well as talk with our experts, who are standing by to answer any questions and to schedule a demonstration.