Why you should use a comprehensive distribution software
If you want to be champion in FMCG or CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry you have to be the GOD of distribution. The success mantra for excelling in this industry are:
- Ability to identify the need of consumers quickly
- Inventory optimization
- Just-in-time delivery
Days are gone when these brick and mortar FMCG/CPG companies used to follow the push strategy i.e. make and push the inventory to the channel partners (CFA, Stockist,Distributor) by stimulating them by offering various schemes in this believe that their channel partners will take care of the secondary sales.
Let’s define primary sales and secondary sales first. Sales which occurred between companies to channel partners (CFA/Stockist/Distributors) called primary sales and sales occurred between these channel partners to retailers called secondary sales.
But this make and push strategy do not work in this competitive and rapid changing world. The reasons are many but the major reasons are:
- Stockist/Distributors are no more your loyal partners
- They are not competent enough to effectively manage the broad retailer network spread across the length and breadth
- Distributor does not have the knowledge base on what is the exact potential of a territory and its demographics
So the existing philosophy adopted by these FMCG and CPG players is “Demand pull” that means spreading awareness, creating interest and generating demand, managing displays at retail stores, capture share of shelf, optimum stock availability and many more. Unlike the channel partners these FMCG and CPG companies are very much qualified so they know their which product is for which SEC (socio economic class), what is the market potential and competitors activity.
These brick and mortar companies have started to communicate with the retailers directly because they realized this fact that this is the actual point of sales where the end users come to buy the product so to capture secondary sales is very important to understand the actual sales trend.
These brick and mortar companies are using legacy ERP solutions for managing primary sales but still for capturing secondary sales they are using traditional paper based methods and face many complexities like:
- Long replenishment cycle
- Delay in receivables
- Error prone system
- Time/cost/effort consuming
- Westages and stock out
- Assumption based demand planning and many more…
FForce distribution software is the perfect solution for these companies empowers them to manage their entire retail network spreaded across the length and breadth of the country effectively. With FForce – distribution software you can instantly book orders with the help of smart phone/tablet/iPad at your retailers point and immediately that will forwarded to the distributor and distributor will immediately process order as there is no need to review. FForce empowers you to conduct much more than order booking :
- Real time stock audit
- Manage share of shelf and display
- Real time customer feedback
- Tracking competitors activity
- Effective implementation of sales schemes
- Smooth sales returns management
- Managing purchase history and credit limit
- Ability to generate ready to produce reports
- Interoperability with any legacy software