Independent Prophet 21 developer and Fractional CTO
I design and build the integrations and line-of-business apps that Epicor Prophet 21 does not handle out of the box. You work with one experienced developer who knows distribution. You get a clear estimate before work starts, and a 30-day satisfaction guarantee once it does.
The problem
Most distributors have one. It might be the billing file that goes to the bank, the spreadsheet that drives purchasing, or the order process that depends on someone re-keying what a customer already typed. It works most of the time. It has worked for years. And one person knows how to keep it working.
The problem is not that the process is old. The problem is that it fails quietly, and the business finds out late. A missed business rule becomes a rejected transmission. A rejected transmission becomes a delayed deposit. Nobody made a bad decision. The process simply had no way to tell anyone it was in trouble.
None of these fail for lack of effort. They fail because the work takes three kinds of knowledge at once: how P21 stores and moves data, how distribution actually operates, and how to build software that holds up for years. It is rare to find all three in one person.
The stakes
Doing nothing feels free. It is not.
One person stands between you and a failed process. You hope they get it right every day, and you hope nothing happens to them.
Capable people spend part of every day on repetitive work a system should do, and keystroke errors ride along with it.
You put off the P21 upgrade, the move to the cloud, or the new module, because the old process might not survive the change.
The longer a fragile process runs, the more of the business gets built around it. It does not get cheaper to replace. It gets harder.
Who you work with
I founded Aldrich Web Solutions and spent 20 years building software for Prophet 21 distributors before selling the company in 2023 (they are still going strong today). I know what it is to make payroll every two weeks for people who depend on you. I also know what it costs when a critical system fails at the wrong moment, because I was the one who had to answer for it.
Today I work independently. When you call, you talk to the person who has years of experience and will learn your process, design the solution, and build it. Nothing gets lost in a handoff, because there is no handoff.
“When we learned Heath was available to help us with our project, we jumped at the opportunity. He has a talent for making complex systems simple and reliable. His contributions were essential to the success of our project, and we highly recommend him.”
Scott TindleDirector of Customer Support, Midwest Equipment & SupplyThe plan
Fill out the short form. I will call you back to hear what is going on. There is no charge and no pitch.
I learn the process, tell you plainly whether it is feasible, and give you an estimate before any work starts.
You know where the project stands the whole way through. There is no long-term contract, and the first 30 days are covered by my guarantee.
Services
Connect P21 to the banks, vendors, customers, and systems around it. Replace the flat files, re-keying, and spreadsheets with integrations that check their own work and alert an operator before an error becomes an exception.
Prophet 21 IntegrationsWeb, mobile, and Windows desktop apps built around the way your business actually runs. Productivity apps for the field, portals for customer questions, tools for your operators.
Custom Business AppsMost distributors are sitting on years of sales history nobody has asked a hard question of. I find the blind spots in product mix, sales and customer buying patterns, put the answers where your team can act on them, and say plainly which parts of the business AI will not help with.
AI for DistributorsSome projects are a second full-time job on top of running IT: the upgrade rollout, the new servers, the vendor decision. I work alongside your IT manager for a defined stretch to get that project over the line, or sit in on vendor meetings and contract reviews as a second opinion. Sized to what you need.
Fractional CTOCase studies
A wholesale distributor's third-party billing ran on a process more than a decade old. The people who built it were long gone. The bank had retired the file protocol for everyone else and kept it alive for this one customer. A single subject matter expert kept it accurate, and a failed transmission could delay millions of dollars in payments. I built an application that pulls billing data from Prophet 21, applies the business rules of both the distributor and the billing partner, and tells the operator exactly what is wrong before anything is sent. It went live in about four weeks. A primary operator and several trained backups now run it.
Read the full storyA wholesale distributor wanted to help its customers stock what actually moves. Many of those customers have no system that tracks aging or seasonal sellers. Area managers tried counting inventory by hand, which was slow and produced nothing the business could add up. I built a scanning app for Zebra handheld scanners where one scan of a serial number identifies the item from sales history. A custom sync gives managers what they need in the field with no VPN, and the P21 database is never exposed to the internet. A web portal turns repeated counts into what the distributor wanted all along: what sold, when, and how long it sat. It was deployable in about two months and is still being extended.
Read the full storyA multi-state wholesale distributor sells consumable products its customers cannot afford to be without. I designed and built a system where customers set minimum and maximum levels, scan items out as they use them, and see exactly what to order to get back to target. Orders flow into Prophet 21 through its standard API and import processes with minimal handling, which removed the keystroke errors along with the labor. It later grew to include access-controlled cabinets. It shipped as desktop, web, and mobile apps, about four to five months from concept to first deployment.
Read the full storyThe guarantee
If you are not satisfied during the first 30 days of your project, and I cannot make it right in your opinion, I refund what you have paid me and we cancel the project.
I would do this anyway. A client who paid and is unhappy is a worse outcome for both of us than a refund. Putting it in writing means you do not have to wonder.
The terms are simple. A refund ends the project, and the work I have done comes out with it. Costs paid to others on your behalf, such as travel, hardware, or licenses, are not refundable.
A newer problem
AI tools are good at producing something that looks like working software. That is a real advance. The gap is everything a demo does not have to handle: the business rules nobody wrote down, how P21 actually stores the data, and what should happen when a record is wrong, a file is late, or a connection drops.
Each new requirement strains a design that was never planned, which is why these projects tend to break more the further they go. What closes the gap is not a better prompt. It is knowing the system, the business, and the ways it fails before the first line is written.
FAQ
Both. The approach adapts to what each environment allows, and the case studies above apply to either.
No. I am an independent developer with two decades of experience building software for Prophet 21 distributors.
You get an estimate before work starts. Larger projects are priced by scope, not by the hour. There is no long-term contract, and you always know where the project stands against the estimate.
It depends on the process. As part of the project scope, I will give you a range for your specific project and the time it requires.
Yes, and it usually works better. I work alongside your team. They keep ownership of their systems, and I carry the project they do not have the hours for.
Evansville, Indiana. Most work is remote with distributors nationwide. On-site visits are available, with travel billed at cost.
Request a call back
Tell me what is not working. I will tell you plainly whether it can be fixed, roughly what it would take, and whether I am the right person to do it.