Bennett Lumber (www.blpi.com), a medium-sized lumber manufacturer located in the Pacific Northwest, didn't become an up-from-nothing success story by resting on its laurels.

The Bennett Lumber story began in 1939, when founder Guy Bennett, who was working for Potlatch Corporation, developed a sideline business sawing scrap lumber to make fruit boxes. Demand for the wooden boxes was so great that Bennett quit the local mill to make them full-time. When the US entered the Second World War, Bennett diversified into manufacturing ammunition boxes. He diversified again in 1950, into custom lumber milling, when cardboard began to replace wood as the material of choice for the boxes.

By 1957, Bennett's backyard operation had grown to the point where it employed 30 people. He and his son, Frank, purchased other mills in Moscow, Troy, and Princeton, Idaho, and added another in Clarkston in 1966. The once-thriving box trade shut down in 1968.

Since then, Bennett Lumber has expanded some mills and shed others. Today the company comprises Guy Bennett Lumber Company in Clarkston, Washington and Bennett Lumber Products in Princeton, Idaho.

Guy Bennett's son, Frank, daughter Jan Dimke and grandson Brett Bennett make up the company's management team. Total annual production, about 180 million board feet at both Bennett sawmills, is sold to wholesalers and wholesaler distributors, retailers and remanufacturers. The total number of employees at both mills is just under 300.

Sales manager Jim Vandegrift says there are several reasons for Bennett Lumber's success over the years. 'We sell quality products, including specialty products and patterns,' he says. 'In addition, we're close to both the timber supply and to our main markets. We have excellent rail connections to our customers, through Burlington Northern and Union Pacific, and by truck through the Interstate network. Finally, we're always planning ahead. In 2005, for example, we're going to continue to modernize and upgrade our dry kilns.'

Bennett Lumber's commitment to progress can also be seen in the company's decision, in 1997, to install LISA Classic software in order to automate sales and inventory management and accounting in the Princeton and Clarkston mills. Over the next few years the software performed well and did everything Bennett Lumber wanted it to do. But, in early 2004, the company decided to upgrade to LISA 2003.

'The original software worked just fine,' says Bennett Lumber network administrator Scott Tucker. 'But it was time to move to the advantages of a SQL database. Our sales department is located at the Princeton mill and we wanted it to have real-time access to Clarkston's inventory. In addition, one person can now take care of the invoicing for both mills.' The upgrade to LISA 2003 took only one to one-and-a-half weeks. By February 2004 the installation was complete and both the Princeton and the Clarkston mills were using LISA over a wide area network. LISA runs on Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

'The upgrade went very smoothly,' Tucker says. 'We've always had a good working relationship with the people at LISA and they know how to make the software do what we want it to do. Any glitches that came up during the upgrade and after were dealt with quickly and efficiently.' Tucker says he is very pleased with LISA 2003.

'We have broadband Internet connections at both mills, so there's virtually no access lag-time,' he says. 'It's also a far more stable system. We're not experiencing the crashes we had with LISA Classic and we no longer worry about one person's mistake bringing down the entire system. Too bad our other software applications don?t run on the network as smoothly as LISA.'

Vandegrift uses LISA to monitor the mills' inventory of lumber in the yards against sales, which is important because Bennett Lumber often pre-sells lumber two to four weeks ahead of actual production. 'Because LISA runs on Bennett Lumber's wide area network, I can check inventories in both the Clarkston and Princeton mills against production and sales,' Vandegrift says. LISA 2003 enables Vandegrift to create many different kinds of reports. They include: Sales orders; Accounts receivable histories by customer; Shipments by day, week and month; Amount of sales by salesman; Purchase history by product; and Sales order detail.

Larry Henderson, shipping supervisor in the Princeton mill, uses LISA to keep track of inventory. 'With LISA, I can keep on top of what's already been sold and what's still in our inventory,' Henderson says. 'It helps me make sure the right order gets on the right truck and rail cars.'

Henderson and his crew at the Princeton mill load an average of eight to 12 trucks per day and two to eight rail cars per week. In order to accurately track lumberyard inventory, they use digital signature pads, to capture the signatures of truckers on shipping documents, and hand-held computers, to scan and download to LISA the bar codes on packages of lumber.

Henderson says LISA saves him a lot of unnecessary paper work. 'Using LISA makes it easy to reconcile the manual count with the inventory in the database,' he says. 'We find any mistakes easily. Plus, there are no manual calculations to make - and therefore no mistakes to make - because LISA makes all the calculations.'

Administrative assistant Roxanna Nagle, who also works in the Princeton mill, is responsible for invoicing, accounts receivable, payroll and banking. She uses LISA mainly to do invoicing and to post the invoices when paid. Using LISA makes her job much easier, Nagle says. 'All of the information I need to complete an invoice is already in the database,' she says. 'So I rarely need to do any more than fill in the current pricing and match the order. LISA does the rest.'