Customer Management Software

Before you can wow your customers, you have to make sure you understand how they view their relationship with your business. You need to understand what things they like and what things they would like to see improved. To do this you need to track and review all the interactions your customers have with your business. Good customer management software can help you to do this. You need to ensure that your personnel track all interactions with customers, and store feedback from all meetings, calls and emails. With this data you can periodically review and identify things that may need to be changed with your sales, marketing, customer service, order management and processing and delivery processes to improve your customers’ experiences.

Sales Processes

Salespersons are on the front line with your customers – they routinely get customer feedback that can yield valuable insights. However, salespersons are notoriously bad at keeping detailed records. You first need to make available to your salespersons strong, easy-to-use, highly functional, customer management software to make it easy for them to capture all of this feedback. Then once you’re tracking all this feedback, you can review it and act on it to improve the customer experience. You need to allow your salespersons to always be able to access contacts and profiles for the right people in your customers’ organizations, and see any comments entered. They need to be able to easily create calendar entries for calls, follow-ups and reminders. They need to be able to attach any transactions in the system directly to a calendar task. They need to be able to delegate calendar tasks to others for follow-up. They need to be able to keep records of emails, call notes and easily access these so that customers feel like your salespersons are always aware of their needs/wants. You need to provide the tools for salespersons to efficiently manage their leads pipeline to keep prospects and deals moving through the sales process stages. The right customer management software can help you accomplish all of this. In turn this will help improve customers’ experiences and ultimately improve your customer retention.

Marketing

To improve customer retention, you need to continually communicate with your customers to provide them with information they find useful. This information could include updates on supply chain issues, updates on your products or ways of substituting products, for example. Customer management software can let you create outbound email marketing campaigns that focus on educating your customers on your offerings and alerting them to opportunities. You can make use of limited time promotional pricing campaigns and elect to have these override your everyday or contract pricing. You can also use data analytics and business intelligence to mine your data to find out which products or groups of products are often sold together. Once you have these products that are sold together, you can search for customers that are not taking advantage of this and have your salespersons contact them proactively. You can also keep tabs on which customers show declining sales of certain products and craft highly targeted incentives for them to buy more of these products. You can create reports and alerts of declining products and declining sales to specific customers. In conjunction with good customer management software, integrated business intelligence tools can greatly improve the success of your marketing programs. This will also improve customer retention.

Customer Service

Delivering great customer service requires that your reps always have access to the latest data your customers are looking for. With customer management software, customer service reps will have access to full customer account information. They should be able to click into any transactions to see any notes made by salespersons or warehouse personnel and update customers with shipping and delivery information. You should consider using a ticketing system so that your customers don’t have to wait on the phone to get in touch with the specific customer service rep that they last spoke to. Instead, they can enter a ticket with their request and since the ticket includes the full conversation record, any rep can pick it up and respond effectively. You can also consider setting up automated emails to customers to provide them with notification of orders moving to fulfillment or shipping information. This type of automation helps customers get the information they need without having to call to get it. This always leads to increased customer satisfaction and will improve customer retention.

Order Management Software

Once your customers place orders, you need a system to manage these effectively. You need to be able to see all orders that come in from multiple selling channels. Strong order management software should be able to let you see all orders originating from different channels across multiple warehouses. You need to be able to efficiently process orders through each stage from orders to picking, packing, shipping, delivery to customers, returns and billing. Strong order management software is one of the most powerful tools in your program to create happy customers. Unless your order management software allows you to quickly and accurately process orders, you will not be able to meaningfully increase customer satisfaction. Your customer satisfaction scores will always be tightly linked with your ability to get customers the goods they need fast. Your customers need to be able to get updates on the processing of their orders easily, to improve their experience with your business. You should also explore and implement customer loyalty programs and pricing to reward repeat customers. Strong order management software together with customer-focused pricing and loyalty programs are very significant tools to improve customer retention.

Another critical order management software capability that can greatly improve customer satisfaction is to give your customers access to a self-service portal to place their own orders. This frees up your customers from having to call in orders or place their orders during your business hours or having to call in to get order statuses and updates. A self-service portal can also let your customers browse for and find products that you carry, that they may not otherwise have known to ask about.  Also, a self-service portal can give them access to reports on their own purchasing from your business. They can also pay invoices online rather than sending in checks. This is one of the most powerful tools you have to increase customer satisfaction and improve customer retention.

Shipping and Delivery

The bar for meeting customers’ expectations for cheap shipping and fast delivery is very high. To increase customer satisfaction, your order management software needs to be able to offer multiple shipping options across multiple small parcel carriers but also through LTL and FTL carriers, if needed. If you deliver using your own trucks, you need to be able to track deliveries and capture proof-of-delivery using mobile apps. Exceeding or even meeting customers’ expectations for shipping and delivery may be tough, but if you can, you will greatly improve customer retention.

Getting Feedback

Requesting feedback directly from your customers is an easy and often-overlooked process. Using the tools in your customer management software, you can spin-up a Customer Satisfaction team of service reps to proactively solicit customer feedback. This Customer Satisfaction team can focus on your largest customers first then be rolled out more broadly. The data you can get from a Customer Satisfaction team call is often unfiltered and can be very helpful in determining what your customers want. In addition, the process of actively soliciting customers’ feedback conveys to your customers that you value their feedback. It also signals the emphasis you are putting on customer satisfaction. As a result, this continual feedback process will improve customer retention.

Summary

Focusing on ways your business can increase customer satisfaction and thereby improve customer retention can have a big payoff. It starts with getting the right software tools in place: customer management software, business intelligence capabilities, customer service tools, order management software, order processing, self-service portal for customers, multi-carrier shipping and delivery capabilities. If your current system doesn’t do this, contact us to learn about Accolent ERP, a leading Cloud-based solution for distributors that does all of this in one integrated system. Then once you have the right tools, build a culture in your business of emphasizing customer satisfaction, this will automatically improve customer retention.

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Food & beverage distribution software is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software for food & beverage distributors. ERP software runs most distribution businesses across many vertical industries. The key attribute of ERP software is that all the distribution business’ data is stored in a single database – meaning that the same data is available across all functions. Typically, ERP software for a distribution business covers the core functions of eCommerce, order management and processing, inventory control and tracking, purchase order management, warehouse management, and the general ledger and accounting.

Why do food & beverage distributors need ERP software?

The food & beverage industry is complex with some unique requirements. Without a comprehensive food & beverage distribution software, there are many possible areas in which mistakes could be made. Food & beverage distribution software keeps track of food materials coming in, the repackaging and/or transforming of these into a different output, the storage of the goods in the warehouse, followed by the shipping of the goods to customers on orders. In addition, given the sensitivity of food & beverage handling and processes, and chain-of-custody issues, no food & beverage business can really operate effectively with a comprehensive software solution. This is particularly true in the event of contamination or a recall when the business needs to be able to account for and trace all inputs and outputs.

Order Management and Processing

Food & beverage distribution software needs complete order management and processing capabilities. Order management keeps track of incoming customer orders from multiple channels including eCommerce. Order processing tracks orders through pre-defined stages from quotes to orders through fulfillment to delivery to the customer. Food & beverage distribution software must be able to pull in orders from linked online stores on ecommerce platforms (such as Magento, Shopify, Woo Commerce) and ecommerce marketplaces (such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart) as well as from B2B customer self-service portals.

Inventory Tracking and Control

Food & beverage distribution software has to manage the inventory of raw materials and finished products in multiple units of measure. The inventory of each product has to be visible at all times to facilitate the processing of raw materials into finished food & beverage products as well as the fulfillment of customer orders. Inventory tracking and control for food & beverage distribution software in particular has to manage catch weight and work with lot tracking.

Purchasing Management

Food & beverage distribution software has to handle the purchasing of multiple raw materials and/or finished products. The purchasing management software needs to be able to work with the inventory tracking software to ensure materials are procured in a timely fashion to keep the processing operations supplied and running smoothly. Lines and processes that run out of raw materials inputs and have to be shut down can cause serious food quality control issues. In addition, food & beverage distribution software must handle strict controls on raw materials sourcing and labelling of raw materials and finished products.

Lot Tracking and Cold Chain

Most food & beverage products are lot-controlled, meaning that the food & beverage distribution software needs to record where a product came from, which manufacturer, its weight, what its expiry date is and where the product is stored. Managing all this information and ensuring that products are not used or sold after their expiry dates or that a cold chain is properly maintained requires careful recording. This data has to be maintained with the product and recorded each time the product is moved, repackaged or transformed in some manufacturing process. As important as recording this data, is ensuring that the data is made available to all parties that interact with or touch the food & beverage product.

Special Requirements for Food & Beverage Distribution Software

There are some unique requirements for food & beverage distribution software that differ from other distribution industries. These include:

1. Inventory Management – Unlike most other distribution industries, food & beverage companies use catch weight to record inventory and sales. Catch weight is the practice of tracking inventory by case or box but selling it by weight. This practice is required to reflect the natural variability of organic foods and produce. Not all ERP software systems can handle catch weight.
2. Lot Tracking – Other industries require Lot Tracking too, but this is a must for food & beverage distribution software. All food & beverage products are subject to strict quality, expiry date, cold chain and location tracking requirements imposed by FDA and other regulatory bodies. Records need to be maintained for possible contamination, allergens, hazardous materials and other product recall purposes.
3. Bill of Materials – For food & beverage products that are processed through various stages to finished products, complete Bill-of-materials capabilities are required, including the ability to have unlimited nested BOMs. BOMs can be specified for all parts of the process including for cleaning, sanitation and sterilization.

Conclusion

Food & beverage distribution requirements are more complex than other distribution industries given the added requirements of catch weight processing, lot control tracking, bill-of-materials requirements for food & beverage processing, and strict quality control and reporting required by regulatory bodies. If your food & beverage distribution software is falling short, contact us to see what Accolent ERP Cloud-based software for food & beverage distributors can do for your business.

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You are running your wholesale distribution business on an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system, which delivers, among other things, your order management and processing, customer management, inventory control and tracking, purchasing management, and general ledger and accounting. You also need customer management software functionality to manage all your customer relationships, track leads, manage a sales pipeline, close sales effectively and run outbound email marketing campaigns – this is also known as customer relationship management (CRM). Many good ERP solutions also offer CRM, but ERP and CRM serve different core markets although they share many features. You really need both ERP and CRM functionality to successfully grow your business in the very competitive wholesale distribution market.

The Problem: Should You Purchase 1 Integrated ERP CRM System, or 2 Systems?

Most good ERP solutions offer extensive customer management software functions that cover the core capabilities of CRM software. There are also a number of CRM-only software solutions that are well known and have established market presences. And…. most sales teams are strongly attached to their known and preferred CRM solution. So, do you need to accommodate the sales team’s CRP preferences in order to get the most out of your sales personnel? Implementing a separate CRM-only solution will certainly make your sales team happy, and it is quite possible that the CRM-only solution includes more capabilities than the customer management software functions embedded in your ERP software. However, this means the two separate ERP and CRM systems need to communicate effectively. Also a big advantage of the customer management software capabilities of a good ERP system is that all the transactions already in the ERP system can easily be linked to calendar tasks or customer records. This is much harder with a separate CRM system.

How This Problem Was Addressed in the Past

Historically, the biggest and most sophisticated players bought separate ERP and CRM software systems and took on the job of integrating the systems themselves through customization. Smaller distributors that lacked the capability to manage multiple enterprise software systems either did without CRM software or settled for stand-alone CRM solutions not tied-into their ERP software. This disadvantaged the smaller distributors who were, as a result, not able to get the most out of their sales teams.

What Changed?

With the advent of web-based software, the problem of integrating two enterprise software ERP and CRM applications became much simpler. The historical challenges of ensuring the data from two enterprise systems were stored in the same database and the two applications ran on the same or compatible platforms have become significantly more manageable. With Cloud-based, web-services systems, the integration can be handled using REST-based APIs.

Today, many large enterprises routinely use vendors such as Salesforce.com for their CRM software while running their ERP as a separate system. Similarly, for smaller distributors, the ability to pick separate ERP and CRM systems is much more achievable. This gives small and mid-sized distributors the ability to optimize both their ERP and CRM choices just as larger players have done for years, without the massive effort that made this prohibitive in the past. The key to taking this approach is to ensure that the integration between the ERP and CRM systems is robust and done well. Small and mid-sized distributors that want to go down this path should make sure that they choose ERP and CRM solutions that are both Cloud-based and have native web-services architectures. Do not be fooled by legacy systems that are just hosted in the Cloud and claim to be “Cloud-based.” These types of solutions that are not natively built using web-services cannot easily take advantage of API integrations.

Today’s Web-Based Systems

Software systems that are built on web-services architectures can “talk” to each other more easily, because they’re designed to operate in a common web environment. With web architected products, a salesperson can have a CRM application running in one tab of a web browser and the ERP application in another tab. Using APIs, the systems can be integrated to allow customer management software details, contacts’ information, sales quotes, customer notes, customer sales history, etc., to be sync’ed so that a salesperson can easily switch back and forth between the CRM and ERP systems. This gives you the best of both worlds with a manageable amount of effort. Sales team personnel that are already familiar with a particular CRM solution will not have to re-learn anything. Additionally, you can keep sales personnel – who are not always very diligent in maintaining records - out of your customer data. You don’t want a salesperson who’s rushing to make another call to inadvertently change the contact or ship-to information for your largest customer -- which means your warehouse can’t fulfill the customer’s order properly. Salespersons can operate in CRM to process leads and go to your ERP software to generate quotes or to take an order or convert a quote to an order.

You Also Have the Option of a Built-in CRM

Many stronger ERP software solutions have built-in customer management software functionality. For example, using Accolent ERP’s customer management software features, salespersons can: create calendar tasks to schedule and track follow up, easily access customer records and profiles, access any transactions in the system and link these to calendar tasks, and send emails from the system and have these tracked. They can track prospects’ deal statuses from leads to closed deals. They can also run screens of customer sales declining and create follow up tasks for these. They also have access to linked 3^rd-party business intelligence to do detailed data analytics to slice and dice customers’ purchases of products. They can also manage outbound email campaigns using their own blast email platforms (such as SendGrid or SendinBlue). This is a viable approach for most sales teams albeit with a small investment needed to re-learn how to use these customer management software features.

Summary

With Cloud-based web-services software you have both options available to you. You can use strong cloud-based ERP software like Accolent ERP to run your distribution business as well as to provide the customer management software feature your sales team needs. Or you can link Accolent ERP to a Cloud-based CRM solution. Contact us to learn how Accolent ERP can power your wholesale distribution business.

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Warehouse operations are typically very labor-intensive and frequently account for a significant portion of distributors’ costs. Using a warehouse control system for distributors to track and then optimize warehouse operational efficiency can often lead to markedly lower costs. For an existing distribution business warehouse here are two ways to increase operational efficiency: the first is to carefully evaluate and if appropriate modify the warehouse layout, and the second is to evaluate and perhaps modify the storage locations used for products. Both approaches attempt to improve the flow of goods through the warehouse and cut down on wasted effort.

Making changes to the warehouse layout, or changing where specific products are stored, is necessarily disruptive, and so should be done carefully. Typically, this kind of revamping of warehouse layout or storage locations will be done only when business is slow, or when you have recently added or deleted even 5-15% of your inventory. Even with a strong warehouse control system for distributors these are not easy changes to identify or implement. However, even small changes in these areas can lead to big improvements in efficiency and cost.

Warehouse Layout

Laying out your warehouse is something that will already have been done. It is a massive exercise to completely redo this and so likely will never happen. However, it is possible to review and perhaps modify and/or redesign certain areas of the warehouse to improve the flow of goods through the warehouse. For example, if some areas in the warehouse are hard to get to or there are other access issues, it may be possible to consider things like removing an aisle to create an area where forklifts can operate safely. It may also be possible to move or redesignate staging areas or loading and shipping areas within a warehouse.

Product Placement

It is easier to move products around than it is to change the warehouse layout. However, modifying product locations is still challenging, and you need a powerful warehouse control system for distributors to provide the data on which to base product moves. Changing product locations would be done to reduce efforts to pick or put-away goods or to improve safety or accessibility. For example, fast moving items could be moved closer to the staging areas. Similarly, heavier items could be moved to areas that have better access for forklifts and pallet jacks.

There are three main methods of determining optimal placement of items in your warehouse. These are Inventory Stratification, Like-Items (also known as Family Grouping), and Special Considerations.

Inventory Stratification

Using a typical ABC type product categorization, products can be organized by their sales volumes. So the “A” category would be the fastest moving items, “B” the moderate movers, and “C” the items which move slowest. You may not need a warehouse control system for distributors to understand that all other things being equal you would want to place your “A” items so they are most accessible for storage and shipping. The “B” items would be less accessible and the slowest moving “C” items would be the furthest away.

The disadvantage of applying this placement method is that it may mean you end up storing unlike items side by side, but if you prefer to organize your warehouse based on usage and frequency, this is the method of choice.

Using your warehouse control system for distributors, it is possible to fine-tune this method of organizing the warehouse. To the ABC categorization it is possible to add a loading/unloading ratio for each product. The ABC category applies to the frequency at which items are used, and the loading/unloading ratio factors in the handling of the items from the time it enters the warehouse to the time it is shipped out. Basically, the loading/unloading ratio is the number of trips warehouse personnel have to make to get to the storage location versus the number of trips it takes to get the item from storage to its point of use. The higher the ratio, the more important it is for that product to be placed close to its point of use.

Like Items or Family Grouping

Like-Items, or Family Grouping, means placing like items with similar characteristics next to each other. Using this method, one would store pipe with pipe and sprinkler heads with sprinkler heads, etc. Similar items have the same kinds of storage requirements, e.g., the space requirements for different bore pipes are similar but quite unlike the space requirements for sprinkler heads that would likely go into a traditional bin. Another benefit of this type of system is that there is an obvious organization of products so they can be more easily found by pickers or put-away after PO Receiving.

You might also group items that are frequently sold together, like sprinkler heads and valves. This would make it easier for pickers to fill orders for items that will be specified together. You might also consider creating zones for different types of products that often go together. The same product could also have multiple locations within the warehouse to facilitate sale with other products that it is often grouped with. Not every warehouse control system for distributors can handle this, and even if yours can, this will increase the complexity for pickers and put-away personnel and may lead to errors.

Special Consideration

Another method of grouping is by ‘special consideration’, which takes into account the unique way some items are received, stored, picked, packed and shipped. Take the example of very heavy items that might require special equipment for picking. That alone could influence the placement of that item in your warehouse. Other special considerations might be size, fragility, perishability, or whether the item is hazardous in any way.

Conclusion

Warehouse operations are very labor intensive and so, even small changes in the warehouse layout and product placements could lead to big efficiencies and big cost savings. Using a warehouse control system for distributors that allows products to have multiple units of measure (e.g., Eaches vs Boxes vs Pallets), that tracks inventory at multiple locations for each product, that can support multiple picking methodologies and that allows for the use of wireless scanners for warehouse operations, can pay for itself quickly. The efficiencies, reductions in errors, and personnel cost savings, add up fast. Contact us to learn about Accolent ERP’s warehouse control system for distributors and see what is can do for you.

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To succeed in today’s very challenging economy, you must build an e-commerce business. The idea can be daunting, but … if your ERP solution is already linked to online stores such as Magento this is actually very simple. How so? All you need to do is create a store account, download a theme and customize the look and feel of the online store. Then, you can automatically push products as well as product updates and inventory from the ERP system to Magento and automatically pull in the orders placed on Magento. The ERP system functions as the inventory management system for Magento as well as the fulfillment or warehouse management system for Magento. You can be up and running and selling online within a few days, and since Magento has an opensource edition, the cost can be surprisingly affordable.

E-commerce is Here to Stay

E-commerce has been around for a long time. However, the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and 2021 and the lockdowns that ensued, fundamentally changed the role of e-commerce. According to the US Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey for 2020, e-commerce sales increased by 43% in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, rising to $815.4 billion in 2020. Through the pandemic, most consumers and many businesses were forced to use e-commerce and did. For the most part, they were impressed by the convenience, ease of use and ability to easily compare options, that e-commerce provided. Now, even after the lockdowns have ended, this experience has permanently changed buying habits. Your customers now demand e-commerce options, and you have to deliver these e-commerce options if you hope to retain your customers. You can create a single online store on a platform such as Magento, or you could consider multiple online stores as well as selling on online marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay or Walmart. You can also create a Self-Service online portal.

Types of E-commerce Solutions

Traditionally, e-commerce solutions were thought of as either B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). The original distinction between B2B selling to businesses and B2C selling to consumers is blurring as both types of customers continue to embrace e-commerce. B2B solutions are typically Self-Service Portals for your existing customers that have pre-established credit terms and pre-negotiated complex pricing including contracts, matrix pricing, quantity breaks, etc. B2C solutions are more limited and allow customers to purchase items typically at a set price and prepay by credit card. Both types of e-commerce solutions allow customers to search for items, place orders, view status of their orders, and view their account history and invoices. e-Commerce solutions can be online Self-Service portals, or stores on e-commerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, Woo Commerce or online marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay or Walmart.

How the Right ERP Solution Can Help

Regardless of the type of e-commerce solution you implement, there are several challenges that need to be addressed. These include figuring out how to update your products and prices, how to manage your inventory, how to sell online across multiple platforms as well as through physical stores, how to fulfil your orders, how to purchase products from your suppliers, how to track your customers, etc. Most e-commerce solutions do not have robust inventory, order, fulfilment and purchasing capabilities. That is where ERP solutions come into the picture. ERP solutions excel at (1) inventory control and tracking across multiple warehouses and multiple units of measure for each product, (2) order processing and order management, (3) warehouse management for picking, packing and shipping operations including multi-carrier shipping, (4) purchasing management (5) customer relationship management and (6) Reporting and BI. If you have an existing business, chances are that you already have an ERP system. If it is the right ERP system that has an online Self-Service portal and is already linked with multiple e-commerce platforms and marketplaces then you’re in luck. To create an online Magento store for example, the ERP solution will serve as the inventory management system for Magento as well as the fulfillment engine and warehouse management system for Magento.

What ERP Can Do to Build Your E-commerce

ERP solutions can be particularly helpful where your e-commerce strategy includes multiple online stores and/or self-service portals. The ERP solution serves as your central source of truth across all selling channels. We discuss below each of the areas in which an ERP solution can provide the operational capabilities to power your e-commerce business.

Inventory Management

An online Magento store, for example, without a comprehensive inventory management system for Magento that includes inventory control and inventory tracking across multiple branches and warehouses, will quickly run into trouble. It is important that the inventory management system for Magento allows multiple units of measure for each product, since products are often purchased in pallets or cases and sold by the each.

• Inventory Control: Allows you to view products by group, by category, by sub-category, by product, what is committed, what is available to sell, where the products are located in the warehouse, what is coming in on purchase orders, and when.
• Inventory Tracking: Purchasing goods from suppliers often involves taking ownership of the goods before they arrive. This means you need to be able to track the flow of goods from the supplier through the Supply Chain to your warehouse and/or from your warehouse to customers.

Order Processing and Management

Orders can come in from e-commerce online stores, or through a self-service portal, or a variety of other channels and a key success factor is being able to process and manage these efficiently.

• Order Processing: Orders go through various stages from receipt of the order to fulfilment by the warehouse which includes the operations of picking, packing and shipping, then delivery to the customer, managing backorders and invoicing the customer.
• Order Management: Order management entails keeping track of the orders received from all the different channels in one place and ensures that orders are not overlooked as they are processed through the various order processing stages.

Warehouse Management

Many e-commerce-only sellers will outsource warehouse management to a third-party. However, if you operate an online Magento store, for example, alongside other physical channels, a warehouse management system for Magento is critical to being able to get the goods ordered quickly to your customers without error. Warehouse management covers six key processes:

• Receiving: Includes checking in and logging incoming items to verify that you’re receiving the right quantity, in the right condition, at the right time.
• Put-away: Involves moving items from the receiving dock to their correct storage locations.
• Storage: Includes safely storing and logically arranging your inventory to enable fast and accurate picking.
• Picking: This is the process of collecting the items needed to fulfill sales orders.
• Packing: To prepare the picked items for shipment, they must be safely packed into the correct packaging with an accurate packing slip.
• Shipping: Once packed orders are sent out on the right vehicle, at the right time, with the correct documentation, so customers receive their orders on time. To get the best rates and delivery you need to be able to rate shop against multiple carriers and/or LTL, FTL and rail options.

Purchasing Management

As you sell goods, you need to keep your e-commerce business restocked. Purchasing management helps you decide what inventory to purchase, how much to purchase and when.

• Reorder Planning: As products get sold you need to plan when to replenish products that are getting close to their reorder points. Reorder points are generally preset thresholds based, for each product, on the product’s safety stock level, the rate at which the product is sold or used and the lead time that it takes to get the product into the warehouse after a purchase order is placed with the vendor. The process of reorder planning seeks to balance the amount of inventory you purchase against the return on investment of tying up capital in inventory.
• Placing Purchase Orders: This involves first determining which pre-qualified suppliers can give you the best price and terms on the inventory you are seeking to purchase. Then once you have determined which suppliers to purchase from, you need to create purchase orders with the inventory line items you need to be filled by the supplier or vendor.
• Receiving and Settlement: Once the goods are shipped by the supplier, they need to be tracked through the Supply Chain and then correctly received and booked into inventory at the right cost. If you are ordering goods from overseas suppliers, the supplier’s price must be marked up by the Landed Costs including: shipping and insurance costs, clearing and forwarding costs, import duties and tariffs, local transportation costs, etc. Settlement involves ensuring that all receipts of goods as well as all Landed Costs are properly matched to purchase orders and the suppliers and/or vendors are paid.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

e-Commerce platforms have very limited CRM capabilities. For an online Magento store, for example, the ERP solution can provide not only the inventory management system for Magento and the warehouse management system for Magento, but also the CRM capability. CRM helps you keep track of your customers’ and prospects’ details, profiles, interactions, and overall relationships. Tracking all this information allows you make more sales, improve your marketing and provide better customer service.

• Closing More Sales: With CRM, salespersons can record all the feedback from customer interactions and have it always at hand. Information is not lost, important follow up can be calendared and tracked, and feedback captured, and all of this greatly improves the likelihood of a successful sale. Also, salespersons can manage their sales funnels to turn prospects into leads, then into opportunities, then into deals and then finally into closed sales.
• Marketing: CRM allows incoming leads to be prioritized and properly categorized using a pipeline approach to sales. This process can be improved with calendaring and setting up the regular communications necessary to progress leads to sales opportunities.
• Customer Service: By tracking all customer interactions, CRM can help support personnel better respond to questions. Also, all support personnel can see the same customer record and so anyone can respond knowledgeably to the customer’s inquiries.

Reports and Business Intelligence (BI)

With a full ERP system, you get extensive reports and BI capabilities. These can be used to analyze and improve your e-commerce operations too. For example, you can use BI to optimize the inventory management system for a Magento online store to minimize investment and maximize turns to improve ROI. You can analyze the warehouse management system for the Magento store to improve fulfillment and improve the customer experience. Also you can use BI to analyze your e-commerce sales and determine how you can improve. You can analyze your customers’ buying behavior to uncover many hidden cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. For example, many customers buy several products together, and once you identify this, you can search for and find those customers that are buying only some of those products but not others. These are then up-sell opportunities. If products that are typically bought together but some are rising and some are falling, this might signal, for example, that customers are substituting one product for another. With an early-warning alert like this, you can adjust your purchasing to better position yourself.

Summary

Accolent ERP is a Cloud-based solution that delivers complete inventory management, order processing and order management, warehouse management, purchasing management CRM and reporting and business intelligence. Accolent ERP is linked directly to many online e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, Woo Commerce, and online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart. Accolent ERP also offers an online Self-Service Portal that allows your customers to place orders, and get their negotiated pricing, payment terms, account statements, reports on their purchases, etc. Contact us today to learn how Accolent ERP can serve as the inventory management system for Magento, the order management, CRM, purchasing management and the warehouse management system for Magento or any of the other e-commerce platforms or marketplaces Accolent ERP is linked with.

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Field service management software is used to schedule, dispatch and manage remote technicians that provide services to customers. These kinds of field services most commonly include installation, service or repairs of systems or equipment. The right field service software can help you improve the quality of services you deliver to your industrial machinery and heavy equipment customers as well as improve the utilization, training and effectiveness of your services resources.

How Field Service Management Software Reduces Downtime

Field service software helps companies manage their specialized technical services resources to reduce industrial machinery and equipment breakages and downtime. There are several ways in which field service management software can accomplish this. Firstly, by setting up scheduled proactive preventative field services appointments, technicians can regularly maintain and update industrial machinery and equipment. Secondly, in case of an unexpected breakage or other issue, field service management software makes it possible to quickly dispatch the right technician with the right skillset and parts. Thirdly, if set up properly there may be ways in which operators or field services technicians can use remote diagnostics and/or better communication tools to work with specialized technical services experts to get the machinery or equipment up and running more efficiently.

Using Field Service Management Software for Preventative Maintenance

Using field service management software, you can establish proactive, predetermined, preventative maintenance service schedules for your machinery and equipment. You don’t want to have to try to get hold of a field service technician at short notice to come out only when your industrial machinery or heavy equipment is down. This would be particularly true if your facility is hard to get to and/or the cost of downtime on the machinery is high. Instead, you would schedule preventative maintenance visits by a field service technician – no different than taking your car into the dealership for regularly scheduled maintenance. These maintenance schedules could be based on the usage of the equipment or be time-based or a combination of both. Even more effective is preventative maintenance based on the actual history of the specific machine and its current condition – in other words the schedule is refined after each maintenance visit.

Dispatching the Right Technician

Even with a preventative maintenance schedule, there are times when the unexpected happens. What do you do if you have a preventative maintenance schedule set up, but your equipment goes down between the field service technician’s scheduled visits?  You need to be able to get the right field service technician right away. Field service management software can help ensure that the technician that is dispatched has the right skillset, access to the preventative maintenance logs, and all the parts needed to effect a first-time repair. In addition, with the right field service software, field technicians can communicate with their in-office experts to get the best resolution of potential issues.

Using Remote Monitoring and Diagnostics

In the current IoT (Internet of Things) environment, more and more industrial machinery and heavy equipment systems have remote monitoring capabilities. Pulling machine data into systems that can analyze it allows technicians to spot problems while they are still developing. Using remote system monitoring, technicians can use regression techniques to predict potential problems and address them proactively before they lead to failures. Pretty much all third-party IT/network support, for example, is performed using some kind of remote system monitoring tools in just this way. In addition to performance monitoring, many systems also have built-in diagnostic platforms that can be accessed remotely. Field service management software in conjunction with these kinds of monitoring and diagnostic platforms, can really cut down on unexpected outages and downtime.

A Comprehensive Approach

To minimize equipment breakages and downtime, industrial machinery and equipment users need to use all of the above approaches: (i) regular preventative maintenance, (ii) quick access to specialized technicians when the unexpected occurs, and (iii) remote monitoring and diagnostics of the equipment wherever possible.

For a technical services and maintenance organization, getting the best results for your industrial machinery and equipment customers and the best utilization rates of your technicians also requires strong field service management software. With remote monitoring of machine data and available large language model AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT 4), many problems can be caught long before they cause failures. Using the preventative maintenance logs together with AI tools can also help transfer knowledge and skills between service technicians and create best-practices documentation. This improves the overall skill level of any service organization.

If you are looking to improve how you deliver field services, contact us today to learn how Accolent ERP delivers customizable, Cloud-based, field service management software.

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