Your people shouldn't be the link between four systems.
Orders come in one way and get typed in another. Stock is right in one place and wrong in two. Every extra channel adds another person keying the same information again.
Six things distributors tell us
Orders arrive four different ways
Email, phone, the web store and a rep's notebook. Somebody keys them all into the same system.
Nobody agrees on stock
The store, the warehouse and the accounts each hold a number, and everyone has a favourite.
Pricing lives in people's heads
Customer specific prices, breaks and promises that only certain staff know about.
Picking runs on printouts
Paper goes to the floor, comes back annotated, and gets typed in again.
Customers ring for updates
The information exists. It just cannot reach them without somebody stopping to look.
Month end is a manual build
Margin, movement and customer performance all come from exports and a spreadsheet.
Order in, out the door, booked once.
Sometimes that is new software. Very often it is connecting what you already run so the same information stops being entered three times.
- 01Order capturedWhatever channel it arrived through
- 02Priced correctlyCustomer rules applied by the system
- 03Picked and dispatchedWork lists and paperwork generated
- 04Posted onceAccounts and stock updated without retyping
Where do orders get retyped?
Phone, email, WhatsApp, portal. Tell us how orders arrive and where they get keyed again.
Storefront, product data and accounts, joined up.
A major retailer's Shopify store, their distributor's Akeneo product information system and Sage accounting each held part of the truth, stitched together by manual work. We built the integration so orders route automatically, product data has one home, and reconciliation stopped being a monthly exercise.
More of our work- 01ShopifyCustomer places the order
- 02AkeneoProduct data from one home
- 03SageOrder and invoice posted once
- 04Back outStock and status returned to the store
Questions distributors ask
Do we have to replace our ERP or accounts system?
Usually not. Most distribution problems we see are gaps between systems rather than a bad core system. Connecting what works is faster, cheaper and far less disruptive than a replacement programme.
We already have a warehouse system. Can you work with it?
Yes. We integrate with what is in place and build only the parts that are genuinely missing.
Can customers order themselves?
Yes, and it is often the fastest return in the whole project. A portal moves the data entry to the person who has the information, and reduces the calls your team fields.
How do you handle customer specific pricing?
As rules in the system rather than knowledge in a person. Price lists, customer overrides and quantity breaks applied consistently, with a record of what was applied and why.
What about multi channel selling?
That is a common brief. We have connected a major retailer's Shopify store to a distributor's Akeneo product data and Sage accounting so orders route automatically and reconciliation stops being manual.
Where are you based?
Thurles, Co. Tipperary, working with businesses across Ireland. We come to the warehouse, because the real process is never the one written in the manual.
If the warehouse itself is the problem.
Scanners, WiFi coverage in a steel building, the server the whole operation depends on. Software is no use if the environment under it is unreliable.
Infrastructure work
Short answers to the questions people in your sector actually ask.
Tell us what gets retyped.
Describe the information your people move by hand between systems today. That is usually where the fastest return is.