At the top of every business owners’ mind is…. sales. And when it comes to generating more sales you’re probably thinking about increasing your Marketing budget or hiring a new employee. We have reviewed the advantages and disadvantages of hiring before and an even better investment will be into technology - wholesale software to be specific. It can be hard to justify the cost of a Wholesale Software system, especially when you’re currently using introductory software and manual processes to manage your business. But, an investment in technology may surprise you. We’re going to explore a few ways in which wholesale software can actually benefit your employee’s day-to-day processes, help you generate more sales and give you better insight into your business operations. Topics will include:
Simplifying the Ordering Process
- eCommerce Integration
- B2B Online Order Portal
Using Technology to Your Advantage
- Reporting
- Minimizing Manual Processes
Simplify Ordering with Wholesale Software
eCommerce Integration
As your business continues to grow and you decide to explore an omnichannel approach, you’ll want to make sure all systems are integrated and work seamlessly together. Investing in wholesale software will allow for automating the process of website orders by integrating the back-end of your website to your wholesale distribution software. When a customer places an order online, it automatically creates a sales order in your wholesale distribution solution for picking, packing and shipping and will automatically update inventory levels across all systems. When all systems speak seamlessly, your customers and sales reps will have access to the most up-to-date and accurate information.
B2B Online Order Portal
49% of customers say salespeople talk way too much. But how do you sell to other businesses without a salesperson? An online order portal allows your customers to create their own purchase orders without ever having to speak with a salesperson. This order will also auto-populate your wholesale distribution solution and automatically update inventory levels. Not only does the integration of eCommerce and a B2B online order portal save time for your employees but it also minimizes human error by automating processes that were once manual. Customers are more likely to come back to you if the sales process was efficient and cohesive amongst all selling channels.
Download our Change Management Guide to prepare yourself and your team for implementing new software.
Use Technology to Your Advantage
Reporting
With wholesale software, you can expect to have an abundance of data at your fingertips through reporting. You have the ability to set up report automation that reduces the number of times you need to manually re-key information and re-generate reports. Once a report is created using live-linked data, the user simply has to open the existing report and hit refresh to get real-time insight into that information. With Blue Link’s Wholesale Software, another great reporting feature is the Automated Routines Manager (ARM) which allows you to create rule-based automated reports using real-time information stored within the system. This will create an email with a report and send it to all appropriate stakeholders based on a set timeframe.
You may be wondering how all these reports can generate sales. Well, the information in these reports and what you do with them will determine how you generate sales from them. You can have multiple sales reports that show you sales activity across the business and give you insight on where you need to improve. For example, let’s say you set up a Sales by Month report and you start noticing trends and patterns around high-sale periods. You can then plan campaigns leveraging those high-sale periods and plan discount events around the low-sale periods. This report not only helps with the sale of your products but also gives you insight into purchasing trends that will follow the same demand cycle as your sales.
Minimizing Manual Processes
A lot of people like to use the saying “time is money” and that’s especially true when employees make mistakes, and it takes time to correct them. Whether it be the need to rekey in data or a mistake with picking the wrong product in the warehouse, anything that disrupts the sale affects the customer. Consumers and other businesses who are buying your product are familiar with wholesale giants like Amazon and expect all their deliveries to be correct and on time. One of the big tools in automation is Barcode Scanning which leads to faster pick times and fewer picking and shipping error, reducing the risk for human error. This is just one example of how technology can be used by an employee to assist with their tasks and ultimately reduce manual processes and allow the employee to focus on tasks of higher value.
Example: Think about Accounts Receivable (A/R). Instead of manually finding accounts that are overdue and then one-by-one contacting the customer to get them to pay, Blue Link will automatically create a report with this information and then automatically email customers that have an account overdue x amount of dollars. This uses available automatic reporting AND minimizes manual processes.
