Getting daily deliveries to the right lot in the right subdivision at the right time means MCA salespeople must maintain constant communication with their customers and the home office.

“Everyone in our company has a Nextel phone with a two-way radio and we use them constantly to get products out to the sites,” says Mike Longfield president of MCA. “Coordinating deliveries is tough because we have customers who are better at planning than others. Some know earlier on exactly what they'll need and when they need it and then there are others who don't give us a lot of lead time.”

To accommodate their customers MCA does several things. First, they load their trucks at night for the next day's deliveries. This gives them the time and luxury of being able to make a few changes as needed.

“Plus, we start our deliveries at 6:00 a.m. so we can actually make two delivery runs per store before 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. in the morning,” Mike adds.

Further, MCA has learned over the years to juggle orders and deliveries between its three strategically placed branches so that orders can be delivered from the location closest to the customer's work site.

"Our three branches are roughly triangulated across the western and northern suburbs of Chicago, and all are near major expressways so our trucks can get on and off the road quickly. Of our family of employees, nine are fulltime drivers,” says Kathy Eigel, partner and office manager for MCA.

Great Expectations

Good working relationships with vendors is key to making MCA so responsive to their customers needs.

“MCA's business is driven by a several essential product lines and then is supplemented by secondary products that are needed on a more intermittent basis,” says Jim McGinnis, partner and purchasing manager. “We do our best to keep our relationships with all our suppliers at a strong level. They know we pride ourselves on being able to turn around fast on orders and they help us do it. We expect them to help us as much as they can. In this way, we work together to help our customers, our suppliers and our company grow.”

Besides strong vendor relationships, communication, teamwork and logistics MCA also uses SSI's FACTS® computer software to track materials between their three locations and to help them keep control over inventory levels based on customer demand. Among other things the system allows two stores to jointly fill an order that either one might not be able to fill alone.

“Receiving a complete order on a job site is critical to our customer base, because waiting on a box of form ties can shut down a contractor until someone shows up with them,” says Ed Grobelny, partner and operations manager. “We don't want him to be angry with us because he's had six workers sitting idle waiting for something to arrive at the jobsite. Therefore we pride ourselves on filling over 99percent of our orders 100 percent complete within 24 hours. To do that takes the work and talent of a lot of people and a little help from technology,”