The Immense Value of ERP for Wholesale Distributors
The continued shift to a more distributed environment and global trade relationships is inducing change in every industry and wholesale distribution is no different. There are both benignant and malignant aspects to this change. On one hand, with technological advances and an increasingly connected, global and digital economy, wholesale distributors can enter new markets. On the other hand, they are faced with increasing global competition, growing complexity of supply chains and trade regulations, and continued volatility of oil prices impacting transportation cost.
For most modern distributors who must operate in global networks, it has become necessary to develop new ways of doing business with each other within the new network economy. And yet, less than 60% of wholesale distributors indicate processes critical to their businesses are fully supported by enterprise applications like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This according to a 2017 study conducted by enterprise research firm, Mint Justras. Distributors are making do with less than a complete solution to manage basic and fundamental processes such as order-to-cash and procure-to-pay, warehouse management, procurement, and finance and accounting.
But as companies become less vertically integrated to reduce costs and focus more on their core competencies, and as traditional wholesale distributors are seeking for new ways to add value through services, without an integrated sales and distribution software, you are both leaving money on the table and lagging behind.
Why an Integrated ERP Solution is Your Best Bet
Blended roles and the digital economy place new demands on supporting systems, putting your business at a disadvantage if you are running a collection of disparate commercial or home-grown applications. Many of the basic processes required to effectively run a wholesale distribution business are not fully supported and this is bad news since distributors in addition to tracking inventory in warehouse, need to be able to manage activity in warehouse, the transportation, ecommerce and supplier collaboration across a potentially complex supply chain.
In today’s challenging economy, competition is only going to continue to intensify and grow on a global scale. Distributors must be able to transact business to business (B2B) through ecommerce, and also offer products for sale directly to the consumer (B2C) through ecommerce or retail outlets.
A fully integrated wholesale distribution software suite can help you compete, adapt, evolve, innovate, and lead your field. ERP implementations have been proven to produce impressive performance improvements and cost savings.
A modern technology enabled ERP for distributors, provides you with distribution process management, supply chain management, retail and e-commerce back-office operations, location-specific functionalities, business platform capabilities as well as different software delivery modules. Needless to say, distributors gain immense value from an integrated ERP software for distributors.
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