The Gorman-Rupp Company (Gorman-Rupp - www.gormanrupp.com) is a leading manufacturer of pumps and pumping systems for the municipal, water, wastewater, sewage, industrial, construction, petroleum, fire and OEM markets. Pumps include self-priming centrifugal, centrifugal, submersible, trash, priming assist, rotary gear and air-driven diaphragm pumps. In addition, Gorman-Rupp manufactures a complete line of packaged lift stations and booster stations, which include pumps, motors, controls, piping, accessories and enclosures.With headquarters in Mansfield, Ohio, The Gorman-Rupp Company has eight manufacturing locations in the United States and Canada. Together these plants have over one million square feet of floor space and are some of the most modern facilities in the pump industry.

The Gorman-Rupp Company Gorman Rupp Goals: Increase new product sales and reinforce distributor loyalty • by offering 24x7 self-service online ordering, status inquiry, and information access.

Make Gorman-Rupp products very easy to order– even • highly configured products.

Increase service parts business by making it easy • to identify and order the right part; and by making it convenient to order related parts when a particular part is needed.

Implement a solution that could be easily tailored to meet • evolving needs over time.

BuyDesign® capabilities: BuyDesign Customer Sales• web-based sales and service system.

• BuyDesignConfigurator configuration engine and product management studio.

BuyDesign Integrator• enterprise application integration (EAI) toolset.

Results to date: Branded website with all products and service parts • brought up for pilot group within approximately six months; full world-wide deployment to 1000 distributors and 3000 users within just over a year.

Extremely well received by distributors, with many moving • to place a significant percentage of all orders online almost immediately after a brief training session.

Significant reduction in Customer Service load due to • smoother order processing, fewer errors, and fewer status inquiry calls. “Making it easy for our distributors to order configured products

over the Internet is a big step forward since custom-configured products represent a large portion of our business. I have no doubt this will ultimately increase sales.“

Tom Seymour Gorman-Rupp

Director of Sales and Marketing

CUSTOMER PROFILE

ChallengeGorman-Rupp has long recognized the importance of being “easy to do business with” for its network of over 1000 distributors in North America and around the world. Managers had wanted to offer distributors the option to place their own orders over the Internet for some time. But because most Gorman-Rupp products are highly configurable, with many available features and options, the company was finding it difficult to offer self-service ordering that could be used for all products without the assistance of trained customer service personnel.An early website had been implemented, but could only handle a limited subset of Gorman-Rupp products, which prevented most distributors from using it in any substantial way. Competitors were beginning to announce online services as well and Gorman-Rupp wanted to do more than just “keep up.” The company wanted to leapfrog the competition to offer better, easier to use capabilities than anyone else in their markets. Gorman-Rupp sales and IT executives knew they needed a solution with the sophistication to handle all of their products and service parts, but at he same time they wanted an approach that was cost-effective, and that could be easily tailored in-house to meet evolving needs over time. Why TDCI’s BuyDesign®?Gorman-Rupp selected TDCI’s BuyDesign sales and configuration solution because:

BuyDesign provided the configuration capabilities their products required while • making the entire ordering process simple and easy to understand.

BuyDesign was a comprehensive solution that could support standard products, • customized products, and service parts - with robust catalogue, shopping cart, and order status inquiry capabilities.

BuyDesign had built-in integration capabilities that made it easy to integrate with • back-end order processing and manufacturing systems.

The BuyDesign web site could be easily tailored to Gorman-Rupp branding, and • to add unique capabilities that would increase the site’s utility for the company’s distributors.

ResultsGorman-Rupp was able to bring up the new BuyDesign-powered site- with all products and service parts, and fully integrated with back-end systems - within just six months. After an initial pilot period with a group of 15 domestic and international distributors, the system is now being made available to all of Gorman-Rupp’s world-wide distributors, including over 3000 individual users. Authorized users can configure and price products; place new orders; check the status of outstanding orders, shipments, and invoices; and access a wealth of

information, such as new product announcements, spec sheets, drawings, etc.Initial users have quickly adopted the system. After a short web-based training program, most distributors have started placing a significant percentage of their orders online in favor of placing them by phone or fax. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Bill Danuloff, Gorman-Rupp Corporate Vice President of Information Technology. “We’ve routinely gotten comments like: ‘you’ve really done your homework - this system is clean, simple, and easy to understand’ and ‘this is much better than what your competitors have tried to do– yours really works as advertised!’.”“We were pretty sure we had a winner, but the new site has been received even more enthusiastically than we expected,” states Tom Seymour, Gorman-Rupp Director of Sales and Marketing. “And because of that, it looks like the positive impact on our Customer Service department will also be greater than we anticipated. We’re already seeing a reduced load from distributors using the system because the ordering process is smoother, with fewer errors. And we’re getting fewer calls regarding order status since they can easily get that themselves for all of their orders, regardless of how placed.”“Our Denver distributor told me the other day that his people love the new system and they are doing all of their ordering through the web site now,” adds Seymour. “I even had a hard-to-please distributor call me out of the blue to say how happy they are with the system – what a pleasure!”With more and more distributors coming to the site to place orders and check status, Gorman-Rupp is seeing even greater potential for benefit. Danuloff explains: “With continual innovation in our product lines, it’s always been a challenge to get new product information out to everyone. When distributors are coming to our site nearly every day to place orders and check status, we have the opportunity to alert them to new information and provide all the details for easy download.”Another new feature Gorman-Rupp is in the process of implementing is online access to PDF maintenance manuals with hyperlinks to automatically place selected service part numbers or parts lists directly into the BuyDesign order pad. Seymour feels this will have a positive impact on the frequency and size of service parts orders – an important contributor to the company’s profitability.Seymour summarizes by saying: “Making it easy for our distributors to order configured products over the Internet is a big step forward since custom-configured products represent a large portion of our business. I have no doubt this will ultimately increase sales.“

CUSTOMER PROFILE