5 Features To Look For In Your Wholesale Distribution Software
What are the key functionalities to look for when choosing wholesale distribution software for your business?
As a wholesale distributor, you need complete visibility across every element of your operations.
You need to know where your products are at any time – whether in your warehouse, distribution centre or in transit. And to make the best possible decisions, you need to integrate this information with your wider business systems, so your supply chain is connected with your customer relationship management, your financial systems, your procurement data, your purchasing processes, and much more.
Achieving this level of visibility requires having a robust and reliable technology solution in place, and this is where a solution such as SAP Business One can help.
With SAP Business One, you can proactively meet demands from both customers and suppliers. You can also improve everything from demand planning to inventory and supply chain management, and you can run flexible, tightly integrated processes to achieve a high level of operational excellence.
Choosing a wholesale distribution software: The 5 key functionalities to look for
When it comes to selecting the best wholesale distribution software, here are five key features to look for.
#1. End-to-end visibility
To make accurate and informed decisions, you need reliable, real-time, integrated information at your fingertips. However, even today, many wholesale distribution businesses operate with a disparate collection of silo-based accounting systems, warehouse management solutions, and other ad-hoc software and spreadsheets.
Without an integrated view, it can be hard to extract meaningful insights or to determine exactly how one particular area of the business is affecting another.
It’s for this reason that more and more wholesale distribution businesses are turning to modern, cloud-based ERP solutions such as SAP Business One.
Markris Foods, for instance, is a successful wholesale food distribution company based in Queensland, Australia. Markris delivers to all sectors of the hospitality industry and offers a combination of popular and gourmet/niche products from well-known brands. While the business prides itself on being highly responsive to its customer’s needs, the business found its previous ERP system wasn’t providing the level of overarching visibility it required.
To provide Markris Foods with an end-to-end perspective, Leverage Technologies worked with them to implement SAP Business One. The new solution helps integrate their financial management, sales and customer management, purchasing and inventory control and production planning. It also incorporates business intelligence, and easy-to-understand analytics and reporting, so the company’s decision-makers have vital information about the company’s performance and can identify and rectify issues before they escalate.
#2. Supply chain and supplier management
Every wholesale distribution business is built on the reliable and effective performance of its supply chain.
With an ERP solution such as SAP Business One, you can completely transform the way you manage your supply chain, with the ability to track every inventory transaction, reduce your overall inventory management costs, drive faster stock turnover rates, minimise the incidence of stock storage, centralise your purchasing processes and much more.
You can even gain visibility into supplier performance and collaborate with individual suppliers securely via the solution.
Since implementing SAP Business One, Markris Foods has enjoyed far greater control over its supply chain.
“I don’t know how Markris would cope without it to be truthful,” says Dean Browne, Markris Foods’ Sales & Account Manager at Markris Foods. “We do everything from purchasing to stock-takes to bin locations to reports on sales; telling us what our top five customers are, things that we never had privy to… when we had our old system.”
“We would definitely recommend Leverage Technologies to any business looking at implementing a new ERP system,” adds Cole.
#3. Chargeback management
In the fast-paced distribution sector, having a robust and centralised process for managing the financial aspect of all orders – including chargeback management – is essential. Without it, costs can quickly escalate and consume valuable time and profits.
SAP Business One allows you to manage your chargeback processing – enabling users to track customer chargeback/back-bill transactions, reduce overall processing time, and even collect on unauthorised chargebacks.
You can also speed up order-to-cash processes thanks to automated workflows. This means you can reduce manual workload, eliminate error and help everyone work more productively.
#4. Order and order processing
To retain a competitive advantage in your sector, quickly and accurately fulfilling orders is essential.
With a quality ERP solution like SAP Business One, you can improve the overall customer experience with multi-channel ordering and fast order processing.
As an example, Leverage Technologies helped Sydney-based Dental equipment distributor W9, reduce the order processing time by over 50% through SAP Business One.
You can very quickly convert quotes to orders, and secure payment for your invoices faster, with automated, built-in debt recovery processes. You can also gain support for integrated procurement management, and optimise your purchasing processes from start to finish.
#5. Reporting
To stay on top of your operation, you need to be able to create fast, accurate reports on inbound and outbound shipments, inventory, and item locations.
SAP Business One version for SAP HANA puts as-it-happens business insights into decision-makers hands and can help you define and focus on the right priorities. With a single platform for analytics and transactions, you can solve the seemingly unsolvable with real-time simulation and planning, and measurably boost the performance of all your key business processes.
Keune, for instance, is a distributor of professional hair-colour products. Keune was looking for a solution that would provide them with more comprehensive reporting, better inventory control and management, and enhanced scalability. One of the key reasons Keune chose SAP Business One was its wide range of reporting options.
Leverage Technologies partnered with Keune to implement SAP Business One in just two months, and the business now accesses a range of detailed, real-time reports that have helped them identify opportunities for efficiency, eliminate unproductive ways of working and drive greater profitability across the business.
Want to learn more? Chat to Leverage Technologies
Leverage Technologies is a leading technology firm with specific and extensive experience in wholesale distribution.
To find out more about SAP Business One, get in touch with us by calling 1300 045 046 or email info@leveragetech.com.au.
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