Your wholesale business is limited to your ability to process orders. The quicker you can process and deliver goods to your customers, the more orders you can fill, but only if you can order and receive goods from your suppliers just as quickly. The ideal scenario would be for manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors to use similar technologies -- or even the very same software -- in order to expedite orders and streamline their order management processes.
You can't change the entire supply chain overnight. But you can start by changing how you process orders. You can boost your wholesale order management capabilities by using order management software. This type of software will save you time and money by streamlining the order management processes you use to move products.
Wholesalers take part in a complicated supply chain that links manufacturers to end-users. You receive massive quantities of goods from manufacturers, break those orders down, and ship them out in smaller units suitable for distributors to take to retailers. Different links in the supply chain have different requirements. Different distributors or retailers (you may work with both) need different unit sizes to suit their needs. It's your job to make sure those needs get met.
There is a great potential for mistakes. The manufacturer can send you the wrong goods or the wrong quantities. Your staff can break those shipments down into the wrong units or send the right units to the wrong parties. Your staff or your customers could place the wrong orders. The more complicated the processing system you use, the more mistakes your people are likely to make.
Fixing mistakes takes time away from processing and shipping out new orders. The more mistakes your people make, the more mistakes that need to be fixed, and the fewer resources you have for processing new orders. You can limit the quantity and complexity of the mistakes that occur on your watch by streamlining your order management system with the right software.
Imagine an order management system that can improve your processes from the moment an order is placed with your sales reps to the moment the product leaves your facilities. Imagine that this same system can empower your regular customers to engage in self-service at their own convenience, so your sales staff can concentrate their efforts on acquiring new customers. Imagine that this same system can transfer each order into your QuickBooks account automatically. Imagine your managers can review orders and inventory levels on a daily basis, whether they're at the office or on the road. Imagine this software sends sales orders directly to your warehouses, reducing the opportunities for mistakes to be made.
If you can imagine all that, then you can just about imagine what this software can do to boost your wholesale order management capabilities. By giving each of your departments the opportunity to improve their efficiency, you can streamline your entire operation. As your operations accelerate, you will be able to service more customers with more products. You will boost your orders, because you boost your customer base. You will improve your internal processes, so those orders are processed and shipped more quickly. And you will even streamline your accounting efforts, because those orders will be transferred directly into your accounting program.
The only thing you have to worry about is whether your suppliers will be able to keep up. Once you've seen the results of streamlining your order management capabilities, however, you will have all of the evidence you need to convert your suppliers to your new system. Whether you get them on board or not, you know you made the right move to keep your orders streaming.
