It has been a slow year for most businesses, largely due to trade tensions between the United States and China.

Yet, this could be the best time for you to look inward at your processes and find ways to improve.

1. Streamline your ordering process

Consumers nowadays require convenience, such as the ability to shop and order anytime – therefore, an e-commerce system is increasingly crucial. You can even include sophisticated e-commerce features such as a ranking of ‘Popular Items’, ‘Recently Bought Items’, as well as the customer’s past purchases page, and give them the option to add to cart. 

For larger-value or B2B customers who are likelier to order via a phone call, a complete ERP system like SAP Business One HANA has in-built advanced analytics to analyse their past purchases and provide sales recommendations, for example items ordered by other customers with a similar profile. Your sales team will also be able to see the outstanding receivables and payment patterns of the customer before approving a discount or confirming the quotation.

2. Keep an eye on inventory utilisation to ensure certain level of costs and margins.

In today’s environment, businesses simply cannot avoid the task of tracking and forecasting inventory utilisation diligently. If a business fails to track or forecast inventory utilisation, it is likely to over or understock, resulting in a loss of profits.

SAP Business One provides an inventory forecasting option, which uses historical data and pattern recognition to compute future demand for inventory. This is possible due to the Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms within Business One.

3. Optimise the packing and delivery process.

The distribution centre should be arranged in a manner that is most efficient. For example, related items, or items commonly ordered together should be placed near each other to reduce or eliminate the need to backtrack in the picking process.

Some companies also engage a professional third-party logistics provider, which improves the customer experience by sending them automated text messages when their order has left the warehouse, the estimated time of delivery, and providing a tracking option so they can see where their package is at any time.

Optimising your wholesale distribution process is certainly tedious. However, by investing time and effort, not only can your organisation maintain profitability but also come out ahead of competitors.

If you have already improved your business by improving product quality, removing excess costs, and upskilling your staff, SAP Business One for Wholesale Trade can be the right move for your business.

If you would like to find out more, feel free to contact our team for a free consultation.