In my last blog, I spoke about the massive issues caused by manual systems, and how adopting process automation can help your clients control costs and eliminate these inefficiencies.

But in competitive industries such as wholesale, distribution, or retail, your clients need to do much more than just eliminate inefficiencies. Every dollar counts, so they need to be looking for ways to both cut costs where necessary and invest in long-term solutions that will be more cost-effective.

Every business is striving to stay competitive with innovation, technology and improved processes. That means your client’s businesses need to be too. Because continuing to rely on how things have always been done can be the fastest way for them to get left behind.

When I previously spoke about process automation, I talked about how it can help your clients achieve:

• Increased staff productivity
• Streamlined reporting
• Better management of suppliers
• Improved customer satisfaction.

Which ultimately all results in tighter costs and margin controls — and therefore, more revenue.

You might think that the intricacies of increasing cost controls can be daunting and complex, but it’s been laid out in an easily understandable way in HARMONiQ’s Controlling Margin and Costs eBook.

The eBook will go into more detail about the various processes and changes you can implement in order to control costs, but today I’m bringing you the top 3 methods of leveraging process automation. These will increase your client’s capability to control costs and give a huge leg-up on your ability to be competitive.

Every dollar counts: 3 ways process automation can control costs and boost your client’s competitiveness

1. Eliminate double-handling

Technology can make or break your client’s business. While the right kind of tech can boost their efficiency and productivity, the wrong kind could be their downfall.

This is especially the case if they have multiple systems working in isolation. This creates a huge number of issues, one of the most significant being an extreme amount of double-handling. This includes:

• Importing and exporting data between different systems
• Entering the same data multiple times
• Re-entering data if there’s errors and inconsistencies

Obviously, this level of inefficiency is going to rapidly increase costs, not help control them.

Double-handling is a constant adversary for retail, warehousing and distribution businesses, and process automation is one of the only ways to guarantee victory over it.

Businesses who use software that integrates all aspects of their operations (accounting, inventory management, customer service, eMarketing, etc.) can easily identify and eliminate instances in which staff duplicate their efforts, make errors, or repeat data entry.

2. Streamline your client’s reporting

Monitoring your client’s KPIs through robust reporting is a great way to ensure their business stays on the right track and is effectively controlling costs.

Many business executives think this means having to dedicate significant resources towards data compilation and analytics. But is that really the case?

Of course not!

Automated reporting is an opportunity being seized by businesses who want to gain a competitive advantage.

By making full use of their reporting tools, leading businesses generate reports to ensure that:

• Financials are on track
• Variances are investigated immediately
• Sales staff are held accountable for their targets
• Generating pipeline analytics is fast and easy

So not only does process automation allow your clients to track how they have done in the past, it can also help them plan intelligently for the future.

3. Engage your client’s customers

Businesses frequently rely solely on staff to action follow-up tasks and respond to customer enquiries. This almost inevitably results in some tasks falling through the cracks, which means missed opportunities and a compromised customer service record.

That’s hardly ideal if your clients are trying to remain competitive — especially if they are relying on referrals or return business to boost their bottom line.

This is where I’ve seen businesses use their CRMs (Customer Relationship Management systems) to intelligently achieve significant advantage in customer satisfaction. Some examples of what they do:

• Automatic follow-ups to quotes
• Targeted emails to touch base with existing customers every few months
• Personalised follow-up emails to customers who have deviated from their usual buying habits

By using a CRM to automate these tasks, your clients could be saving time and effort for their staff, while also continuing to maintain meaningful relationships with their customers and drive increased sales and cost controls.

Seize the automation opportunity

The endless benefits of process automation don’t just stop there. If your clients are trying to stay competitive and you want to know more about methods for controlling costs, then check out HARMONiQ’s Controlling Margins and Costs eBook.

As strong advocates for automation, we’ve helped businesses leverage technology to increase their efficiency and profitability with our HARMONiQ Business Tuning Software.

It’s a unique platform that gives your clients:

• Full integration by incorporating all operations into one platform — totally streamlining their business.
• The ability to track key performance metrics, as well as pipeline analytics, allowing your clients to forecast their outcomes and make more informed decisions.
• Automation of simple selling and sales support tasks, such as sending follow up emails for quotes, or setting reminders for follow up calls.

These are just a few of the ways HARMONiQ can help your clients optimise their business processes and gain that edge they need. As a truly customisable and scalable software, your clients can leverage HARMONiQ to drive significant efficiencies, while also ensuring that the software will continue to grow alongside their business.

If you would like to discuss how you can start leveraging process automation for your clients and other great technology to achieve significant efficiency improvements in their businesses, please call me on 02 9542 2000.

Author bio:

Drew Arthur is the Managing Director of Micronet Systems and is focused on helping business leaders overcome inefficient sales, inventory, and customer relationship management practices by leveraging cutting edge technology. If you want to gain better control of the sales processes in your client’s business, click here to see how HARMONiQ Business Tuning Software can make a difference to their business, or click here to get in touch.

It’s estimated that Australian wholesalers and retailers lose an average of 1.24% of total turnover per year through various forms of inventory shrinkage.

That adds up to a huge amount of money — last year alone, it was estimated that a staggering $4.5 billion was lost due to inventory shrinkage in Australia’s retail, warehousing and distribution sector.

Most businesses attribute a large portion of these losses to theft and breakage. While these factors do play a significant part in lost capital, there’s no denying the huge losses that are caused by inefficiencies and errors.

By inefficiencies, I mean:

• Unchecked stock variances, or the excessive monitoring of variances
• Invoicing errors
• Administrative mistakes
• Double-handling of inventory and tasks

And the worst part?

Often these expensive drains on productivity are either passed onto your client’s customers, or simply taken as a hit to the company’s bottom line.

So, how can businesses, like your clients, minimise their costs when it comes to dealing with variances and shrinkage?

The best way is the adoption of process automation.

See how process automation can help your clients control costs: HARMONiQ’s Controlling Margins and Costs eBook

How manual processes are wasting time

The following are just two of the many examples where the speed and productivity of a business is drastically affected by processes that have not yet been optimised.

Inefficient Exception Reporting

Exception reporting is the process of flagging any discrepancies between a company’s actual and expected performance. It is an essential part of controlling costs and tightening margins, but completing it manually causes all sorts of problems.

There are so many points in the reporting process that are prime opportunities for errors and inefficiencies:

• Scrutiny of inbound stock data
• Analysis of outbound stock data
• Data entry across a number of different points
• Reconciling data across different systems.

Not only is this hugely inefficient, but an error in any one of these steps means massive inaccuracies across all reporting.

Needless to say, the whole process is prone to administrative and paperwork errors that can contribute in driving your client’s businesses inventory shrinkage.

Delayed Variance Investigations

A good example of a knock-on effect from inaccurate reporting is the way it can affect stock variance.

Adjustments and variances tend to pile-up. If you’re waiting weeks, or even months, before you sift through paperwork and complete investigations, then your clients are in huge danger of chasing red herrings and failing to identify the real source of the issues.

By this time these situations will have become not only more difficult to identify and resolve, but more expensive as well.

For example, they might discover that they have been short-delivered stock far too late. Obviously, this is not ideal for a myriad of reasons, but it’s the lost capital that’s going to hurt the most.

That’s the advantage of process automation — real-time alerts of excessive variances and the easy identification of problem areas.

How can your clients get a better grip on their stock — and their margins

Although it will likely always be a factor for any retailer or warehouse, inventory shrinkage can be massively reduced with greater automation.

See how process automation can help your clients gain visibility and increase efficiency: HARMONiQ’s Controlling Margins and Costs eBook

Automating inventory parameters

Once your clients have process automation integrated within their business, they can set parameters to avoid various triggers of inventory shrinkage. With these parameters your clients can set alerts for whenever they go above or below acceptable stock levels.

This way your client can make sure they never promise a customer a product that they don’t have, or over order stock that will pass a use-by date before it is sold.

Automated stock adjustments

Process automation can also let your clients know when stock adjustments have been completed. This means any issues that come up relating to invoicing or stock levels can be immediately dealt with.

With this process in place your clients will know in real-time if they need to chase up that supplier who forgot to deliver that one extra pallet before it becomes an issue for their customers.

The best part? Implementing process automation doesn’t have to be difficult

HARMONiQ has already helped many wholesalers, retailers and distributers reduce their inventory shrinkage, and ultimately create a much healthier turnover.

HARMONiQ can provide you and your clients with:

• Real time alerts
• Accurate adjustments
• Easy reporting
• Stock investigations

To learn more about the capabilities of our system, check out our eBook.

In my next blog I’ll be talking about how process automation and cost controls can contribute to a competitive advantage.

In the meantime, book an online demo to see how process automation can benefit your client’s business.

 

Author bio:

Drew Arthur is the Managing Director of Micronet Systems and is focused on helping business leaders overcome inefficient sales, inventory, and customer relationship management practices by leveraging cutting edge technology.