Have you ever wondered what having a successful business means? A successful distribution business, like any business, starts with a successful business plan, with hard working and involved people, to help it grow "organically". This "organic" growing requires time and attention.
But how do you know if your distribution business is moving in the right direction? How can you make sure that you know at any time what happens to your money? What are the signals that you need systems for business growth? After 22 years of experience and thousands of discussions with distribution business people,
we've compiled a list of some of the most common signs showing that your distribution business needs an integrated management system.
The first sign is (probably) the greatest pain point for most general managers or business owners: the lack of real-time reports. If at the time you want to see the current situation of the company to forecast its future and you feel like a crystal ball gazer, it means you need a management system to help you correctly predict the future development of your company. Most often, managers who don’t have an ERP system and who wish to receive a report on sales, receipts and debt, they need to talk to 2-3 people from different departments and wait from a few days to several weeks to obtain the necessary information. Meanwhile, organizations that have implemented ERP have access to real-time reports and know at all times where their money is. With dashboards, scorecards, and other performance indicators they get a 360-degree visibility on the company.
Another signal is when the company is using several software programs that do not have a common database and the same data is entered several times. Besides that employees consume valuable time performing redundant operations, the possibility of human errors is very high. With the implementation of the ERP software solutions, data is entered into the same database by all employees, regardless of the department they belong to and data entry is done in a uniform manner.
Do you often get insufficient stock or overstock situations? The number of expired products is becoming more and more difficult to control? You don’t have an effective way of forecasting stocks? An ERP system gives you a better control over the inventory through various supplier and client indicators: profitability, margins, seasonality, thus proving a useful tool in negociations.
Feeling any (or more) of these symptoms? SocrateCloud, the complete solution for distribution, helps you with:
- automating and optimizing processes
- streamlining your staff
- getting a positive cash-flow
- keeping your customers satisfied and attract new ones
- getting real-time reports and analysis
- getting control of costs and stocks
- gaining the ability to forecast
