When you are focused on getting thousands of products to the marketplace and in the hands of customers, you might overlook that each customer has their own set of expectations. Product quality, pricing, timing, and other variables are rated differently by each customer. Balancing internal performance, costs, and maintaining high levels of customer service isn’t easy but it’s important. Not only do you need customers to be successful, happy customers strengthen sales and drive growth through customer loyalty and increased demand.
Your business won’t get very far without a long line of regular customers, so when it comes time to cut costs, don’t automatically look to cut customer service initiatives. To the contrary, look closer at your customer relationships and your supply chain and you might be surprised at what you discover and how this insight can help you cut costs.
You can use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, such as Microsoft Dynamics® GP, to analyze your inventory along with sales orders and purchasing. This integrated software solution will provide insight and management control of your financials, supply chain, manufacturing, project and services management, and other core business functions. Having all of your key business information at your fingertips, in real time, will make it easier to analyze what your customers are buying, and when. You may discover trends in replenishment orders. You may also find ways to up-sell or cross-sell products that are complementary to their regular orders. Your customer will appreciate learning about similar products which can give your sales figures a boost.
Using Microsoft Dynamics GP to gain visibility throughout your supply chain will reveal ways to optimize procurement and inventory management. You may find that you can get better rates when buying certain raw materials or inventory in bulk, as well as reduce shipping costs. Timing procurement and honing in on your safe buffer inventory levels will enable you to operate with leaner inventory. You can save money by not buying too much inventory, while maintaining safe inventory levels to prevent costly back-orders. Back-orders can be a significant problem and lead to poor customer satisfaction rates, which can result in the loss of customers.
Strike a balance between providing superior customer service while streamlining internal operations by using a comprehensive ERP solution like Microsoft Dynamics GP. You can cut costs and improve customer service without sacrificing on quality. Read this whitepaper (http://www.collinscomputing.com/product_info/gpsc_advanceddistribution.pdf) to learn how you can drive growth by strengthening customer relationships and your supply chain.
By Collins Computing, California Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner (http://www.collinscomputing.com/)
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