Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Many entrepreneurs are still using manual method to manage and track their product distribution. Read this. Solve your daily headache.

Many entrepreneurs are still using manual method to manage and track their product distribution. Read this. Solve your daily headache.
I have met many entrepreneurs that are building their business successfully in product distribution. Some of them are manufacturing their own products and distributing them to their retailers and agents. Some  of them have their own outlets.  Some of them represent certain products to their customers that runs retail business.
Initially it was OK with manual system. Just use the Excel to track delivery, stock and payment. However when the business volume became very high, the headache begins to become severe. Customers complaints shoot up. Stock level is wrong. Delivery is delayed. Stock empty. Let me share with you the process and you will understand why it cause a migraine and sleepless nights to the entrepreneurs:
1. You have more than 1,000 retailers that you supplied your products
2. You have more than 1,000 products SKUs to manage.
3. You have more than 15 salesmen that meet customers every day.
4. Each salesman meets with at least 25 retailers every day.
5. So you have at least 200 customer meetings orders every day. Imagine every customers orders 100 items of various SKUs. You will have 20,000 item orders a day.
6. Warehouse need to receive the orders immediately. Mark the stock that are already booked by customers immediately. So that salesmen do not book items that are already out of stock.
7. Make sure the salesmen do not accept orders for out of stock items. The stock level is changing by the minute.
8. Start packing the items ordered and mark for different customers.
9. Get the delivery man to get the products and deliver to customers.
 10. Salesmen need to check invoices. Look at debtors aging. Those that are in arrears, he will not accept new orders.
11. Salesmen can look at invoices outstanding. Inform the customers on the status and balance.
12. Salesmen can receive payment from customers. Immediately inform Accounting department. He can put the payment to the company bank account at the end of the day. He should update payment status to the people in the office.

Now you can see how difficult it is to manage an distribution business. If you are doing it manually, the business will not become big. It will stagnant. Probably it will die off eventually.

based on this OfficeCentral has created the perfect solution for you:
1. The module is called Distribution Management.
2. It is part of CRM module.
3. You use the price book to manage your product and prices.
4. You use the inventory module to manage your inventory
5. You use the POS to manage your orders.
6. Assign task to your salesmen. What customers to meet, what day. You can schedule it in advance.
7. Your salesman can see the list of customers to visit that day.
8. When he arrived at the customer location, he can use CHECK-IN function in OfficeCentral Mobile Apps to record that he is already at the location. You know that mobile have GPS function.
9. He can log in to the system and see the list of invoices with this customer. Which one is still outstanding.
10. He can receive the payment from the customers. Then he could bank in the cheque or the cash int the bank. Update ti the system is immediate.
11. He can receive orders from the customer. He will use the POS module to do this.
12. The warehouse will immediately know the order details and can start do the packing.
13. The stock balance is updated immediately. Even though the stock is still physically in the warehouse, but it cannot be sold because it is already booked by this customer. For example, you have 1,000 unit stock fo product A. When customer purchase or booked 100 of the product A, the balance that available for selling is 900. This is done automatically by the OffficeCentral.

If you are the BOSS in the office, you can do the following:
1. Assign meeting tasks to your salesmen.
2. Check who they meet, when.
3. Check orders - by customers, by salesmen, by products, by principal.
4. Check what products are selling fast.
5. Check what products are slow moving.
6. Check what principal products are moving or not moving.
7. Check new account added by salesmen.
8. Check your total sales, by salesmen, by principle, by customers
9. Check your aging.
10. Check your cash flow.

Basically OfficeCentral CRM and Distribution module will do a lot of things that gave you huge headache previously. Now you can run your business smoothly. Now you can focus on growing the business. Become big giant.


 




No comments: