Friant & Associates: Their Key to Success

It has never been easy to stand out from the crowd and create loyal customers. Today, with so many viable product options, the job is tougher than ever. Looking at successful companies, what is often clear is their ability to provide solutions that address a real need and to go above and beyond expectations in order to drive customer loyalty. One such company is Friant & Associates, an office furniture manufacturer, based in Oakland, California. By working hand-in-hand with its dealers and creating a design and order process that is easy and efficient through technology deployments and training, Friant has been steadily building its loyal customer base for more than two decades.

Friant has grown by more than 20% annually over the past few years. With a streamlined manufacturing process in place, the company managed this growth while minimizing overhead. They needed a system that could keep pace with its growing business and deliver the best customer experience for its dealer base. Working with 2020 has allowed them to do just this. Providing 2020 catalogs has allowed Friant to create built-in automation so designers can easily create, drawings featuring Friant products and order directly within the office space planning software, 2020 Cap or 2020 Giza.

“2020 Insight provides us start-to-end visibility into the ordering process and enables us to manage and scale up for large volumes of manufacturing. We’re also able to effectively introduce new products and offer the required customization with it—all of which helps us to better serve our customers.”John Woodworth, Purchasing Manager, Friant

With success comes growth and, recently, Friant needed to expand not only its production facilities but
also implement a system that could better track orders and manage production on a larger scale. This would drive further efficiencies and avoid growing pains typical among manufacturers in growth mode. Friant’s executive team decided to partner with 2020 to integrate the manufacturing operations management (MoM) solution, 2020 Insight furniture manufacturing software, into its daily operating process. Developed specifically for furniture manufacturers, 2020 Insight goes beyond traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP)
to deliver a comprehensive platform that connects the entire manufacturing process to create a seamless flow of information from sales order to installation.

With a strong foundation for managing the manufacturing process, Friant plans to leverage data collected to make highly informed decisions about how to further grow its business and, of course, continue to delight dealers and customers, alike. With dedication and unrelenting drive, this is how Friant differentiates itself and where, as its tagline states, “design sense meets business sense.”

Read the full case study here and also read the recent article in Woodworking Network.