Growing Complexity and Cost Pressure

Distribution is becoming increasingly demanding—you know that. Customer pressure on your prices drives margins lower. As margins are being driven down, your customers are becoming more demanding. Everything from packaging to RFID is being customized—increasing handling costs, producing more areas of possible error, and increasing customer returns. Customers need and want services tailored to their needs—but without additional cost.

You may not have systems in place to easily deal with all these demands. If you find yourself dealing with vendor managed inventory, special shipment or delivery needs, bar code, reporting, or a host of other special requests —either from your vendors or for your customers—you may need software features your current system doesn’t have.

Customer relationships are more important, but today your customers may need you less. Information they could once get only from you is available on the Internet.

Even more requirements may be coming your way. More and more customers demand EDI. A few require advanced ship notification (ASN). As the cost of RFID tags slowly comes down, more of your customers will require them.

How To Control Cost and Increase Sales

The business dilemma is this: all of these requirements necessary to make and keep customers cost you money. How do you offset this cost? And if customer demands only increase and become more specific, how do you position yourself to meet the requirements in the future?

Technology offers an answer. You can match the capabilities of your business to the needs and requirements of your customers through technology. Often you can do this without cost. At Data Guidance Group, we help you apply the appropriate tools to resolve these issues.

Begin with a thorough assessment of your needs. Our Guide to Selecting Business Software provides a starting point.