Turkstra

About Turkstra Lumber

Founded in 1953, Turkstra is a family-owned lumber and building materials supplier with over 70 years of history in southern Ontario. What began as a humble lumberyard built on core values of integrity, community, and quality has grown into 11 retail locations, an eCommerce store, and five specialty divisions, serving thousands of contractors, home builders, and DIYers. 

Today, Turkstra has been recognized as one of Canada's Best Managed Companies for 10 consecutive years, earning Platinum member status for sustained excellence in strategy, innovation, and culture. As a business with deep roots and ambitious growth ahead, it needed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that could scale with its expanding operations while delivering the data visibility required to make smarter decisions at every level of the organization.

Challenge

Turkstra was struggling with a limited ERP system that couldn't provide the data visibility and operational flexibility it needed to grow the business effectively. While functional in its time, the platform had fallen behind the demands of a modern, growing operation.

As Turkstra evaluated its path forward, specific gaps became impossible to ignore: the existing platform lacked e-commerce capabilities, offered no robust API library, and could not integrate with external systems or automate complex workflows.

Turkstra also attempted to launch an e-commerce channel, only to abandon the effort because their ERP couldn't handle the volume of data exchange required. The process was too manual to be sustainable. 

The older systems didn't handle e-commerce. They couldn't integrate systems. They couldn’t automate a lot of workflows. Every time we tried to expand or modernize, technology became a barrier rather than an enabler.

Mike Garden, Technology Manager, Turkstra Lumber

What Turkstra needed was a platform that would grow with the organization; one built for connectivity, data accessibility, and operational scale.

Solution

Turkstra implemented ERP One to replace its outdated system and unlock new capabilities for expansion and efficiency.

Two capabilities stood out in Turkstra's evaluation of ERP One: the reporting engine and open API library. Together, these gave the team the ability to dive into their data in ways they had never been able to before — identifying trends, measuring performance, and building integrations with third-party systems.

ERP One's modular architecture also meant that Turkstra could bring more parts of the business onto a single platform, creating a richer, more unified dataset and eliminating the silos that had previously obscured a greater operational picture.

ERP One stood out because of how accessible it made our data. The reporting engine and API library meant we could dive into what we were collecting in a way we simply weren't able to in other systems.

Mike Garden

The most transformative outcome of Turkstra's ERP One implementation was the shift from gut-feel management to data-driven decision making. With key performance indicators (KPIs) now attached to almost every function in the business, leadership gained clear visibility into where the company was excelling and where it needed attention.

ERP One gave us visibility into almost every part of our business. We can see where we’re doing well and where we’re falling behind, and start putting resources in the areas that matter based on knowledge, not feeling.

That visibility extended to customer experience. Turkstra had previously been unable to extract the customer data needed to run targeted surveys and had no system to house or analyze responses. ERP One solved both problems at once, tying customer feedback directly to customer records and creating a connected loop that allows the team to track satisfaction trends and respond with precision.

On the operations side, Turkstra built a dedicated KPI dashboard for its dispatch team using ERP One data, giving leadership the ability to pinpoint delivery performance issues quickly and develop targeted solutions rather than broad guesses. Accounts payable saw similar gains — ERP One's data exchange module enabled a direct integration between Easy AP and their banking institution, eliminating paper checks and delivering what Garden described as "a huge, huge jump" in efficiency.

Perhaps most significantly, ERP One unlocked e-commerce capabilities that Turkstra's previous system had made impossible. A prior attempt to launch a digital commerce channel had to be abandoned entirely due to the volume of manual data exchange required. With ERP One's API library handling that exchange systematically, e-commerce is now a viable and scalable growth channel for the business.

We've gotten more data available easier since implementing ERP One, which has led us to make better decisions operationally and therefore make more profit. It's really helped us examine different trends and find other areas for operational efficiency.

Mike Garden, Technology Manager, Turkstra Lumber

Key benefits Turkstra has achieved from ERP One include:

• Data-driven decision making: KPIs across every business function replaced gut-feel management with evidence-based resource allocation
• Customer feedback loop: ERP One ties survey responses directly to customer records, enabling satisfaction tracking and continuous improvement
• Delivery performance visibility: A dedicated dispatch KPI dashboard surfaces issues quickly and drives accountability across teams
• Accounts payable efficiency: Easy AP integration with their banking institution eliminated paper checks and significantly reduced processing time
• E-commerce enablement: ERP One's API library made a previously failed e-commerce initiative viable, opening a new growth channel for the business
• Unified data platform: Modular architecture brings more of the business onto a single system, eliminating silos and enriching operational insight
• Built to scale: ERP One grows alongside Turkstra, turning expansion into an opportunity for greater visibility rather than added complexity