Order 1

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TO HELP YOU CONNECT, DELIVER AND SUCCEED

Here’s how to win in an evolving marketplace

TOP TIPSGUIDE

WHO SHOULD READ THIS GUIDE AND WHY?

This guide is for someone like you: a driven leader who spots trends and plays an active part in doing whatever it takes to stay ahead. You think strategically and apply creative solutions to solve the most pressing problems.

This guide provides tips that address a host of business challenges, food for thought and best practices for making your business more responsive, agile and forward-looking.

INTRODUCTION

Intense competition. Incredible technological change. Ever-increasing complexity. From globalisation to rising customer expectations and shrinking margins, powerful forces are affecting businesses across the world.

Digital continues to rewrite the rules. Competitors can be down the street or on the other side of the world. Agile start-ups can spring up out of nowhere and win over customers in an instant.

As well as buying wholesale products, your customers also shop for everyday consumer products, like groceries, clothes and books. They can have any product delivered whenever and wherever they want it.

And they now demand this kind of relationship with their suppliers; a relationship that places a premium on time and convenience. One that shows them you know about the pressure they’re under.

We call this effect the consumerisation of wholesale. The balance of power has shifted from the wholesaler to the customer. But there are some things you can do to stay ahead – to connect, deliver and succeed.

INTRODUCTION

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TIP 1

See it and sell it. Know where your inventory is at all times.

You can only serve customers well if you have the items they need in stock. Moreover, not just visible in your inventory, but also available for when and where it’s needed. Otherwise, you have a potential lost sale.

TIP: Make sure you have visibility of your entire inventory, regardless of where it sits within your network. This is especially important for wholesalers that serve smaller customers, like people in the building trades. If a plumber is searching your website for a part to repair a leaky washing machine, he needs to know if it’s in stock. Otherwise, he’s wasting his time trying to track it down. And his customer is already angry because the washing machine is broken.

Digital often takes the blame for why things are changing. In truth, digital is only a piece of a puzzle: the shifts in wholesale are also driven by the changing relationship between you and your customers, and the changing relationships between your company and its suppliers, manufacturers, employees and systems.

CONNECTSTRENGTHEN CUSTOMER AND EMPLOYEE BONDS

CONNECT

ABC Plumbers Merchant

Local Depot

TIP 2

Win customers from competitors with buzz about your service.

While it can be difficult to compete on price, you can edge out competitors by offering better service. Small things, like not asking the customer on the phone for the same information they just gave to the person working the desk at your branch earlier in the day, can add up and provide strong word-of-mouth.

TIP: Equip all customer touchpoints, from call centre reps to service desks staff, with the same depth of information about customers and products. That way, customers enjoy the same high level of service no matter how they choose to do business with you.

TIP 3

Start small. Don’t get stuck by worrying about scale.

While seeing all available inventory is important, what if you have thousands or even millions of products across multiple business units that serve customers in different industries? Where should you start?

TIP: Set your sights on an area of your business that is trending downward even though demand for the product should be high. The problem may be one you can remedy with better service, which could come from inventory visibility or offering more delivery options. Consider running a pilot project. Take what you learn and turn your attention to the next division that needs help. Save time and money by replicating successful solutions.

TIP 4

Don’t ignore employee relationships at the expense of customer relationships.

Your warehouse is the backbone of your operation. There are more expectations on your employees’ shoulders than ever before. In the meantime, managers and leaders have a responsibility to keep things moving smoothly while ensuring their employees are engaged.

TIP: Find ways to give your managers more floor time. Your leaders need to be out alongside employees. That way, they see exactly what is happening at any given time. With business moving quickly, they need immediate information so they can make quick decisions. Plus, it could have the added benefit of boosting employee morale.

CONNECT

Order 1Order 2

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Order & Collection Point

ABC Plumbers’ Merchant

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ABC Plumbers’ Merchant

Click and Collect

Next Day Delivery

Same Day Delivery

TIP 5

Your customers need responsiveness and plenty of options. Give them both.

Businesses that provide services like catering, sanitation, hospitality, event planning, and engineering require tailor-made service from their wholesalers. Orchestration of small and large orders and fast delivery are nearly always the norm. Demand may be unpredictable, and deliveries are often needed in different locations. Other factors, like weather, can play a role. Consider an events organiser. If there’s rain forecasted for the outdoor concert she’s planning, she needs to get her hands on ponchos and umbrellas fast.

TIP: Source items from multiple points in your fulfilment network and keep the process invisible to the customer. Use techniques like cross-docking and merge-in-transit to combine shipments from multiple points into a single delivery. When you have longer lead times, consider drop-shipping. With drop-shipping you can move a big order straight from the manufacturer without needing to first sort it out in your warehouse.

There are many ways to get products to your customers. The trick is to find the most efficient option for every order: balancing speed, availability and profitability while keeping the customer satisfied.

DELIVERKEEP EVERY PROMISE

DELIVER

TIP 6

Your customers live in a 24/7 world. Get items to them when they want them.

Retail customers have grown accustomed to taking delivery of items at any time and from anywhere. Your wholesale customers will be looking for at least the same or even better service, if they’re not doing so already. Make sure you have delivery channels in place that your customers will want to use.

TIP: Let your customers be your guide when deciding where to invest your time and resources. Learn by asking them what they want. You may be able to set your business apart by offering click-and-collect service, where orders placed online are ready and waiting at your branch for pickup. Other delivery variations available today include parcel, LTL (less-than-truckload), next-day, named day, white glove service (move-in and/or installation of larger products), ship-from-branch or store, and many others.

TIP 7

Get returned items back into stock quickly.

While you want to give customers flexibility and control over when and how they receive their orders, don’t forget to make it easy for them to return items that aren’t right.

TIP: When a customer returns an item in resalable condition, make it available instantly for anyone in your network to sell.

TIP 8

Don’t allow legacy software to weigh you down.

Most ERP systems were built when the path to the customer was simple and straightforward. Today, the path to serving the customer is anything but. And new delivery formats and options crop up frequently. Yesterday’s fast is tomorrow’s baseline expectation. ERP, the software that reliably kept supply and demand in lockstep, simply wasn’t designed for the consumerisation of wholesale era.

TIP: Improve your ERP by adding a modern order management system. According to Forrester Research, “[Order management products] complement your existing ERP platforms by directing orders between ERP instances, adding capabilities that many ERPs lack, and providing a consistent view of orders across all front-office systems.”

DELIVER

Acme & Sons

TIP 9

Contain costs through fulfilment efficiency.

Your customers’ hunger for consumer-levels of service – think same-day delivery, next-day delivery and cross-channel returns – can stretch your business to breaking point. Wholesale customers expect retail-style levels of control over their deliveries, especially customers ordering one-off items like repair parts. It’s your job to protect margins.

TIP: Calculate the optimal, most cost-effective fulfilment method to keep costs contained. Leverage inventory visibility to pinpoint items in your network, and take into account variables like labour, fuel, and fleet status.

Increasing value is a never-ending quest when it comes to supply chain innovation.SUCCEEDTHE BOTTOM LINE

TIP 10

Increasing your margins at the expense of good service can lead to lost customers.

If you run a wholesale business with predictable demand but provide products with low margins, it can be hard to increase profit without reducing the level of service. You have commitments to shareholders, so how can you grow profit and keep service levels high?

TIP: Put labour, space and the multiple processes in your distribution centre under the microscope. Analyse productivity of your staff when it comes to picking and packing and reward high performers. Offer coaching to increase productivity of low performers. Consistent slotting or more frequent re-slotting can help keep travel time down, thus improving warehouse productivity and profitability.

SUCCEED

CPipe Manufacturer

TIP 11

Increase time-to-productivity.

As new delivery formats become increasingly commonplace, the skills of the people fulfilling orders will need to evolve. Meanwhile, ecommerce orders are increasing their workloads still further. Digital ordering is making small shipments more commonplace, so the labour force may need to expand quickly when demand warrants it.

TIP: Make it easier to get temporary or seasonal workers up to speed and productive faster. Equip them with mobile devices and intuitive software that mimics the mobile apps they’re accustomed to. Also, enabling put-to-wall workflows can help you to expand capacity at lower cost.

TIP 12

Turn stock around faster.

Speeding up inventory turnaround is often put forward as a way of reducing carrying costs. But it’s is easier said than done.

TIP: Open a line of continuous communication between you and your suppliers. Instead of sorting inventory and then sending it on to its destination, send the truck to the destination straight away (if it makes economic sense). That way, stock doesn’t linger in your warehouse so long. Global inventory visibility and accurate inventory availability information also reduces the need to keep as much stock at your distribution centre.

SUCCEED

The idea of transformation can be off-putting. But it shouldn’t be. Instead, it can be an opportunity to evaluate your business. Look at how it serves

customers today. See what is working, and build on those strengths.

With inventory visibility, operations efficiency and the agility you need to respond to customer demand, you’re perfectly placed to win customers, grab market share and beat your competitors.

Manhattan Associates has everything you need to connect, deliver and succeed in the consumerisation of wholesale era.

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