Behler-Young connects Amazon Alexa and Phocas BI with great results

Can you have a conversation with your business intelligence solution while driving? Behler-Young sales people do. Robert Wright, a Senior Application Developer and Analyst at Behler-Young, integrated Amazon Alexa with Phocas, a business intelligence solution for manufacturers, distributors and retailers. With critical data only a question away, they always know what's going on even when they're on the road.

Watch the video below to see how Wright uses Alexa and Phocas:

Through Amazon’s Alexa voice interface, the act of querying your computer system via verbal commands has now become part of our daily lives.

Wright developed a homegrown application and linked his Phocas account with Amazon’s Alexa app to successfully query Phocas verbally. “I am continuously trying to disrupt our industry, and the functionality of Amazon’s Alexa couldn’t be ignored. Why not combine the power of Phocas and the ease of Alexa?” Eliminating the need for a keyboard and taking mobile computing to the next level, Wright can quickly query Alexa on the go to hear updates on customer and supplier accounts in Phocas, keeping his finger on the pulse of the Behler-Young enterprise.

Behler-Young celebrated its 94th year in business this year. The HVAC distributor is the largest in Michigan, operating 16 branches across the state and Ohio, as well as a large distribution center on the east side of Michigan and its corporate headquarters in Grand Rapids.

The BI tool contains a significant amount of sales data, providing the Behler-Young sales team with a central location for all their customer and product information. In addition to sales and marketing data, the company has integrated its inventory databases to make inventory management more transparent across the organization.

We have a mantra at Behler-Young about having data available at our fingertips. A lot of our initiatives are about getting the data out there so that our people can see it. Because of Phocas, we are starting to see a culture shift where our decision-making processes are becoming more data-driven. This is a big benefit to our company,” added Wright

As a result of Phocas, people are seeing things that they would not have expected to see. Wright explains that commonly held beliefs about performance have often been debunked by the data.

For more information about harnessing your data, download this eGuide, 7 benefits of BI for plumbing and HVAC.