Founded over 50 years ago, C. H. Briggs is a third generation, family-owned and professionally managed business, and is one of the largest independently-owned distributors of specialty building materials on the east coast of the United States. The company has grown from just a hardware distributor to add a wide range of interior specialty building materials to its offering. C.H. Briggs now provides over 40,000 products including hardware, board and panel products and premium surfaces, partnering with more than 200 suppliers to serve thousands of customers. Conducting business through four distribution centers on the east coast, C. H. Briggs has its headquarters in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Standing out from the competition
Change and innovation are central tenets in C.H. Briggs’ core values, illustrated by the company’s ongoing commitment to the early adoption of technology. As a result, the C.H. Briggs IT team is continually challenged to find new ways to gain that all-important competitive edge.

Scott Withers, Chief Information Officer at C.H. Briggs explains: “Many of our competitors choose to differentiate themselves by focusing on operational efficiency. Strategically we feel that to be successful, we needed to shift the basis on which we compete to a more customer-centric strategy, while still preserving the foundation of being operationally excellent.

“C.H. Briggs has always maintained exceptional relationships with our customers, and we realized that capturing information gained while engaging with clients and combining this with traditional ERP could provide unprecedented insight into their behavior and preferences. This would give us the tools to maximize quality of service, setting us apart from the pack. The challenge was to find the software and hardware to support this ambitious goal.”