There’s plenty of competition right now for Australian wholesale distributors and with the value of the Aussie dollar falling, volatility in international markets and rising costs to contend with, it’s more important than ever to make sure the business systems in place can not only support your operations effectively now, but also set you up for future sustainable growth.

We’ll have a look at some of the factors worth thinking about to make sure your business has the right tools to not only perform well now, but also to help build a solid foundation for the future.

Data Overload

When you’re frequently buying and selling products, you can accumulate large amounts of data. You’ve probably heard the buzz term “big data”, which refers to the large data sets that businesses collect and deal with as part of their operations. For example, each time a customer buys a product, you’re collecting data about their buying habits such as the quantities and product types they’re buying, when and where they’re making their purchases, which products are shipping out together and where they’re shipping to. You’re also collecting more personal information about your customers themselves, including their billing information, where they’re geographically located and, depending on the type of sales channel you’re using, maybe even your customer’s age, sex and how they first became aware of your company.

There’s a lot of data you can leverage to not only understand your customer, but understand how to market to them, which geographical areas or business types you’re seeing more success with and which products are working for you.

The best place to start with getting the most out of this big data is getting your reporting together in an easy, understandable format which makes it easy to start seeing the patterns you can then use to adjust your sales and marketing strategies.

Following the Fluctuations

With the right reporting in place and the ability to easily see buying patterns, you’ll also start gaining insight into your stock demand fluctuations. There may be seasonal trends or other recurring influences which you’ll be able to identify from your data. This in turn allows you to start predicting when to adjust your buying of particular stock lines to cater for those fluctuations.

Knowing when to buy more or less stock can really help reduce the amount of old and obsolete stock you end up with and cut down those stock write offs which make every wholesaler cringe.

An On-Point Multi-Sales Channel Solution

Buyers have come to expect different sales channels being made available to them, making purchasing that extra bit easier to work with their time constraints, constant mobility and seamless device interchange, e.g. going from a laptop at work to a tablet or phone in transit or at home. The days when you could rely on a shopfront alone to sell your products are well and truly over for many businesses. Wholesalers who offer an multi-channel sales solution which extends to phone, email and web ordering, allows reps to complete customer orders while out on the road and provides a robust eCommerce platform across desktop and mobile devices can expand their reach and capture the sales that competitors may be leaving on the table.

With multiple sales channels in play, the key to successfully managing them all is by utilising a single ERP platform to bring everything together. It will allow stock information to remain consistent and accurate whether an order is being taken by reps out on the road, by phone or by the web. It can also provide a consistent experience to customers and further drive your brand recognition and overall business image.

Scalability Can Be Your Saviour

All too often, small businesses start with an accounting focused system, which may be great for that core functionality, but fall short on other functions which a business needs as it grows; like a fully featured CRM (to not just know your customer and their buying behaviour better but also let you identify and predict sales trends) integrated with an intelligent inventory management system, business intelligence across all aspects of your operations, marketing and campaign tracking and multi-channel sales functionality with an eCommerce platform that allows real-time information to be presented to your sales staff and customers alike.

If you’re using a system which doesn’t offer these features, you need to start asking yourself what will happen once you’ve grown into becoming a business which needs them as a bare minimum. Will you need to start looking at a new solution that’s more aligned with how your business now operates and go through the pain of a re-implementation? This can end up being a lot more complex, costly and time consuming than starting with a scalable ERP which allows you to seamlessly evolve as a business, without the hassle of data migration and new system setup; particularly when your business is at a critical stage of its growth.

Scalability isn’t about connecting other systems to your accounting software to provide the functionality you need. It’s about taking advantage of the functions within your ERP which are already set up to handle your needs as a prospering business.

If your current ERP system isn’t addressing these important factors, why not have a chat with a JCurve consultant to get a deeper understanding of how you can set yourself up to be a growing business now and continue building your success well into the future.