RC Fasteners & Components – Making a Difference

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Single Vendor Solution
RC Fasteners & Components, Inc. was started in February 2002 in Phoenix, Arizona by Rick & Chris Johnson. They’re an ISO9001:2008 Accredited Stocking Supplier of Fasteners for ALL Industries. Their goal is to supply customers with standard, off-the-shelf fasteners, such as nuts, bolts, screws, etc., Electronic and Aerospace components, and custom, made-to-print fasteners, all from one company. This eliminates the need for additional vendors, which saves customers time and money.

Exceeding Expectations
Rick Johnson, Co-Founder explained their philosophy. He said, “In our company, every customer is a priority, no matter how big or small. We strive to always do more than is expected to help handle our customer’s needs. We don’t promise more than we can deliver, and we continually look for ways to improve quality and add value to products our customers purchase. We believe if we serve our customers with honesty, integrity, and go the extra mile, we’ll earn a customer for life.”

Giving Back
A couple of years ago, they moved to a larger facility in Phoenix, sitting across from a church. “Something happened,” Rick says, “and we were led to open a food bank in our new facility to help others less fortunate.” Today, RC Fasteners has 5 freezers and 2 cargo ship containers in their back lot that are air conditioned for food storage. Each day, they receive food donations from companies like Chipotle, Starbucks, and Carrabbas, to name a few. The Food Bank continues to grow, and the neighboring church members volunteer with packaging. Rick says, “We had the space to help out the church across the street but we didn’t expect it to have any impact on our business like it has. In fact, since we started, we continue to see random acts of compassion from our customers, our suppliers, and our neighbors, and business is doing so well.

Our drivers pick up the food when they’re out on deliveries and we stock it until ministries come in for will call. It’s just a way of giving back to the community.” Rick and Chris are delighted that their initiative is catching on with others in the industry. “Our employee’s love it too because when we’re all loading up the food, we know we’re making a difference and that’s a blessing in itself.”

The Business Edge™ Makes A Difference
“15 years ago,” Rick said, “I was doing research on computer software for the fastener industry to find out which one would be best for us. I checked them all out. The one that caught my eye the most was The Business Edge™ from Computer Insights. It had everything we needed. I interviewed other fastener professionals that were using it, and they all agreed it was an excellent choice for their businesses. So we made the choice to go with The Business Edge™ and fast forward almost 15 years later, we couldn’t be happier. It literally enables us to do more with less people. It also makes it hard to make a mistake.”

Strong Foundation
One of the main reasons we love The Business Edge™is because it is always changing with the times. When technology advances, so does The Business Edge™. With regular updates, their industry focus and new features, it’s all the software our company will ever need.” “We had an analyst come in to our company a few years back and survey us. He literally said our software choice was the smartest thing we could have ever done.” It’s helped build a strong foundation for your company.”

The Business Edge™ Makes ISO9001 A Breeze
We just improved our business dramatically, says Rick.” “If I had known how much ISO 9001 certification would help our business, and how relatively painless this would be, we would have certified long ago!” “One of the main keys to the ease of certification was the Quality Management System in The Business Edge™. When you’re sitting down with auditors and you literally have everything at your fingertips, it takes a normal, several day audit and reduces it into hours.” We were certified in October of 2015 and our certification audit was less than a day long and we passed on the 1st try!”

Auditors Love The System
Rick added, “Auditors and our ISO consultants love The Business Edge™ because it speeds up the whole audit process and gives them everything they need in just a few clicks. No more going through filing cabinets to find everything! Since all our certs are scanned into The Business Edge™ and they print out automatically when we allocate a particular lot in shipping, everything is streamlined. With most of the help from The Business Edge™, we’re running about 90% paperless in our business. People come in and see my desk and don’t think I’m very busy because of the lack of paper on it. That’s the farthest thing from the truth! If you’re looking to get ISO9001 certified or make the transition to ISO9001:2015, The Business Edge™ will make it a whole lot easier!”

Vendor Managed Inventory
He said “At RC Fasteners & Components, we love the Vendor Managed Inventory System that comes with The Business Edge™ It’s easy to create bar code labels specifically designed to your customer’s bin sizes. You get full Able label integration where the labels can even have a drawing of the part on it. The Bluetooth scanner is smaller than a pack of gum and sends orders into a smartphone app that runs on all IOS devices, iPhones, iPads, and iPods. (The newest version of the system will run on any iOS or Android device).

One of the best features about the VMI mobile is once a part is scanned from the barcode on the bin, it shows on the iPad. It gives the customer part, internal part, description, location and min/max. After all scanning is completed, we can upload the order right there from the customer site! It’s great because we can pull the order before our VMI Tech even gets back to the office! Great stuff. Our customers love it!”

Fastener Supply Chain Network™ (FSCN)
Rick is also enthusiastic about the FSCN. He stated, “The Fastener Supply Chain Network™ integration with The Business Edge™ is one of the greatest ideas of modern time in the fastener world.

For a distributor, it makes our job so much faster and easier as our main suppliers and partners are at our fingertips without logging into their portals. When we check a part in The Business Edge™, we may not have it but we can look into the The Fastener Supply Chain Networkand get pricing, availability and location of the parts. It’s like we have multiple locations throughout the US to ship to our customers! When we place the PO with one of the supply chain vendors, it is uploaded immediately from our server to theirs and you get the web discount price as well. This eliminates order entry mistakes from the supplier and saves the supplier time as they just print the order out and fill it.

It’s truly a win/win for us and the suppliers involved in the integration. The Application Program Interfaces (API’s) developed by Computer Insights are the engine behind the live information on the website. It loads our parts quickly on the website. This keeps our customers on our website longer and has improved our bounce rate considerably.”

This article appeared in Distributor’s Link Magazine, Fall 2016

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