How Automation Improves Wholesale Distribution Management Processes
Wholesale distribution management presents a wealth of challenges such as increasing pressures on pricing and gross margin costs, inventory management, employee recruitment and embracing new technology to gain a competitive advantage. Ultimately, overcoming the challenges faced comes at a cost. So how can wholesale distribution professionals meet the ever growing challenges and improve wholesale distribution process efficiency?
Improving efficiency without cutting corners and putting an organisation at risk to increase revenue growth and profitability is a challenge in its own right. Cutting costs can hold a plethora of permutations. Firstly, you could cut salaries, outsource specific processes or cut budgets across the business. However, cutting costs to improve business efficiency doesn’t always mean you have to take drastic action. There are other ways that can be extremely cost effective.
Wholesale Distribution: Investing in Business Process Automation
Investing in business process automation software enables an organisation to grow organically. In fact, investing in process automation and system integration can provide a significant advantage to a business. Process automation can improve the way that data is presented by removing manual administration tasks and enhancing communication between departments, suppliers and customers. In essence, investing in business process automation software to extend your existing business applications capabilities can enhance employee performance and drive revenue growth.
Increasing the Visibility of Information through Automated Reporting
Proactive reporting is a critical factor for organisations within the wholesale and distribution industry. Without effective reporting delays can occur, stock can perish and customers may suffer from poor customer service. Despite being a major part to many business functions, report creation and distribution can be time consuming and prone to errors.
This is where investing in business process automation, to sit in the middle of your wholesale distribution management system and applications, can play a major role. Automating the creation and delivery of an endless variety of reports on a scheduled or event-driven process enables employees to benefit from less administration and 100% error free reports, regardless of the business system the data resides in. Wouldn’t you like to save administration costs and enable your employees to concentrate on value added tasks that can drive your business forward?
Managing the Warehouse with Inventory Notifications
When planning to improve productivity it is important to protect your business from low or high inventory levels. Many wholesale and distribution organisations rely on employees to manually monitor and react to changes in inventory levels. Unfortunately, this process is prone to errors, is an inefficient use of employee time and can dramatically impact reputation if low stock levels are not resolved quickly and efficiently.
The effective management of inventory levels can often be the difference between being able to fulfil an order or not. By dynamically monitoring product lines and distributing an automated email or SMS notification to both internal and external recipients when inventory is approaching reorder point levels you can safeguard against ‘one off’ large orders placed. This approach can be taken one step further by triggering the automation of sophisticated business processes such as automatically generating a purchase order authorisation request and placing the order with a supplier. Why should your employees waste their day manually monitoring inventory data when it can come to them automatically?
Enforcing Rules-Based Purchase Order Authorisation Processes
Authorising the purchase of a product or service for many wholesale professionals still remains a loose, manually-driven process that is slow and open to human error. In many instances, purchases can require multiple levels of authorisations, which are unique to business rules and departmental structures and crucial to financial stability. Unfortunately, this can mean more manual communication being pushed around an organisation resulting in prolonged purchasing cycles. To simplify workflow approval processes many organisations are using an electronic workflow management system and integrating with their primary business systems.
Having the ability to automatically identify if a purchase order requires approval from multiple line managers and direct it to the next authoriser for review, as and when a preceding authorisation has been given, saves time, improves communication and provides a complete audit trail of all purchase decisions made.
Workflow authorisation doesn’t just stop at purchase orders. It can also be deployed to automate additional business processes extending business process automation across multiple systems, applications and departments. Isn’t it about time you achieved greater control over company purchasing?
Wholesale Distribution Management Automation Software
Improving employee productivity, increasing the visibility of information, enforcing company procedures and streamlining business processes plays a major role when you are planning to improve employee and company performance. Enhancing your existing wholesale distribution business systems through business process automation and system integration opens up an endless degree of possibilities to save manual administration costs and drive company growth.
For more information on Business Process Automation solutions for wholesale distribution download the brochure below or call us on +44 (0)330 998 8700.
