Today we are seeing many Wholesale Distribution companies explore the potential benefits of implementing complete business management solutions, leaving their fractured legacy systems behind.
Our parent company, Headland Machinery, a wholesale distributor of machinery and spare parts, made the decision to revolutionise our internal systems and chose NetSuite as the platform to deliver our core business objectives. The benefits were real and immediate. Read more.
Having that knowledge and experience first-hand from an end-user point of view puts us in a unique position to help other wholesale distributors gain the same advantage we did.
As we explore our client’s current software ecosystem we are able to identify, counter and resolve multiple areas of business performance redundancy and provide a holistic solution that benefits the wider organisation, from sales and marketing, through procurement and supply chain, accounting, budgeting and financial control, warehousing and inventory management.
As their technology partner, we have identified the following to be the Top 3 Benefits, when measured by cost savings, organisation efficiency improvement, and minimising opportunity cost.
1. Customer Service
The Problem – Sales and Dispatch Staff are unable to see live information relating to stock levels, and furthermore, what stock has already been committed to sales orders.
The Effect – Miscommunication of information to customers, missed opportunities to turnover stock, inability to effectively management procurement and supply chain in line with real-time demand.
The Solution – A single unified system that provides live information on inventory levels in order to allow both sales, customer service staff to communicate to your customers with correct information, as well as allowing supply chain and procurement staff to make good decisions regarding reordering and stock control.
The Benefit – Customer experience is greatly improved which positively impacts customer retention and performance. Also, cashflow is improved due to the system supporting an efficient ordering process, lowering time stock is kept on hand, and ensuring immediate availability for dispatch.
2. Opening of New Sales Channels
The Problem – Wholesalers are typically restricted to selling direct to business as they do not have the technology, processes or controls in place to integrate e-commerce into their existing systems.
The Effect – Wholesalers miss out on sales opportunities, as well as the ability to gain high per transaction revenue due to being stuck with a single revenue model.
The Solution – A system that allows for a e-commerce solution to work natively with existing wholesale distribution processes and systems, and provide more effective sales and marketing reporting as well as a single source of truth for current stock levels and lead times, regardless of whether the sale is from wholesale clients or direct to the public.
The Benefit – Going from pure wholesaler, to retail/wholesale hybrid insulates the business against fluctuations in the B2B market and provides a new revenue stream with little changes to current dispatching process.
3. Elimination of Data Entry Redundancy and Accuracy
The Problem – Due to their current mix of systems, the same information, for example a quote, needs to be entered (or uploaded) into two or three different systems. From Quoting, to sales order, accounting and invoice processing and customer service records, the same set of information is recorded and rerecorded.
The Effect -Workforce productivity is low due to unnecessary and repetitive administration activities. The same 5 minute task is repeated 4 or 5 times when it could be completed in one step and shared to the other stakeholders in the process.
The Solution – Having a system that allows information to workflow through the business, where each person adds value to the transaction, rather than rekeying what has already been recorded in another system.
The Benefit – Dramatic increase in productivity of staff, as well as the system taking the burden of what has previously been tasks with high levels of manual processing. Significant savings in workforce count, increased costs due to errors.
NetSuite is an end to end Business Management Platform. When an organisation is running a single system, a single source of truth, in real time the benefits are obvious, and measurable. If you would like to find out more feel free to contact us to discuss, or join us on our upcoming webinar series where we will explore how NetSuite can change your organisation for the better.
Author
Michael Dean, Klugo Business Consultant.
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