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The Time Killer

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                                         The Struggle for Speed

When  distributors bought their ERP software system they did all the review the ERP company would let them see, unless you demanded to see a specific function termed: Bi-Directional-ism. Very few distributors understood the value of ‘bi-directional-ism’. So,why is bi-directional-ism important? Because it speeds up your business where the rubber meets the road. It’s easy for sales people to operate and ends up giving you more information about your orders and customers than you’ve ever had before using a program that you probably already own….Microsoft Excel.

Pricing: Most ERP software systems were built at first to let your company hand load product descriptions, units of measure and prices by hand and then eventually were adapted to import commercial database data from IDEA or Trade Service Corp. Not much functionality was built into the ERP’s that considered the day to day operations that distributors encounter. Distributors receive all sorts of price files, most usually in a Excel work sheet, which means that it must be imported…usually by IT. Then, depending on the company, IT interacted slowly or quickly.

Excel is everywhere

Virtually every distributor has Excel on laptops, work stations even in the executive office suites. Sales people developed price matrix’s for various customers as well as their commissions and expenses. Generally speaking if a salesperson wanted wanted to adjust a price matrix for a group of customers, they would either attempt to download that matrix from the system or go to IT and get them to build the file and query. The sales person would adjust the file in Excel and then hand back to IT to upload. In some systems the price update didn’t always “stick” and then someone had to go back and enter the price adjustment by hand. That’s a time killer and it didn’t always get done in a timely manner.

Customer/Job Notes: Adjusting a price matrix is one thing, but when you want to add notes to customer or job files, that is another time consuming operation that required changing screens and often got overlooked because of time. Order or Job notes usually needed to be added along with price adjustments. Depending on the ERP system, the pathway to attach notes often became laborious and in some instances they did not get attached in the proper place or not at all.

Bi-directional-ism comes of age

As the speed of business and mobility increased, the time demand on all parts of the business required semi-automated, bi-directional functions within ERP software instead of taking a number at IT and waiting for files to be exchanged, downloaded, uploaded, price matrix tested, notes attached to job files or even to billing of invoices.

Bi-directional integration should be on the list of your “must see live” to completely understand the time saving and productivity. To fully harvest this productivity gain, one must demand they see all points that bi-directional offers in the system and them train your people to use it. It’s as simple as using the Excel programs you already own copies of.

Bi-directional functions allow you to have more information at your finger tips quicker. While it is not the same as Business Intelligence (the backward look at your customer/job), it’s a good start to putting more information about your customer.

 

 

 

 


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