Is Your Distribution Company Ready for the Big Box?

Is your distribution company ready for the big box? You've hit the big time. Your distribution company is on the radar of CVS, Walgreens, Home Depot or Wal-Mart. Or maybe you’re a manufacturer and distributor of cell phone accessories with an eye on the Apple market. But how do you close the deal with those big box stores?

You need to demonstrate that yours is an established business with the information systems to fulfill the large retailer’s expectations. Specifically, big box companies expect transactions to be:

• Electronic. Electronic data interchange (EDI) is part of the price of entry if you want to sell to large retail chains. Wal-Mart’s purchasing agents aren’t going to take the time to call up your company and place an order every time they need a shipment. They expect you to work within their EDI system to electronically accept and process orders. If your enterprise resource planning (ERP) or accounting software doesn’t integrate easily with EDI, then your team will have to manually re-enter transactions, slowing down the process and introducing the possibility of errors.
• Efficient and on time. One past-due order is likely to garner a chargeback that can drastically reduce (or eliminate) your margin on that order. More than one late shipment, or an out-of-stock situation, can end your relationship with the big box.
• Transparent. Retailers want to log into your system to generate ad hoc reports, such as the volume of product shipped to each store within certain time parameters. If you can’t provide them that visibility, then they will look less favorably on your company.

So how do you make all this happen? You need an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business management solution that is built for distribution companies and will integrate easily with EDI. Such a solution will have the following features:

• Complete distribution lifecycle. The right system will manage all your end-to-end business processes, from marketing and selling through receiving and processing the order through upselling, without the need to manually re-key transactions.
• Self-service portals. The system should have the security settings and flexibility to allow customers and other business partners to log in, enabling them to view real-time order status and run searches on their activity with your company.
• Open-source platform. You need rich customization capabilities that allow you and your integration partners to modify the system to meet your EDI and reporting needs.
• Real-time visibility. You should have a clear and up-to-the-minute view into the entire order management process, including product on hand, orders to be shipped and trends regarding the efficiency of the shipment process.

If you want to play in the big time, you have to present yourself like a big player. A robust business management solution with EDI integration capabilities is an essential first step.

GoVirtualOffice works with distribution companies to select, implement and customize the right business management software solution. Contact us or call 888-773-2123 to learn about how we can help position you for success with big box retailers.

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