Small & midsized businesses all around the world have always had difficulty managing and capitalizing on increasing customer demand. Depending on the volume of sales orders, a small company can have thousands of open sales orders at any give time. While this may seem like a strong ingredient towards increased cash flow, there is a whole other complex area that involves lead times, promise/delivery dates, inventory control, shipping and managing customer priority.
These difficulties, again, not strange to growing small companies, often leads them to look for software to assist in this process. In the past, these companies looked to increase headcount by hiring additional customer service reps to assist in managing the increased volume. These new heads continually monitor supply levels and utilize custom reports to figure out when, where and how much can be shipped. Unfortunately, these reps also have to be perfectly aligned with the warehouse, or else the circle goes on and on for ever.
More forward thinking companies also look to resolve such issues by going out and purchasing an advanced warehouse/inventory warehouse module. However, most of these off-the-shelf, standalone solutions don't integrate/speak to one another, especially if this company has a legacy ERP system already in place. This lack of integration, while able to be solved via custom programming typically comes with a hefty price tag; one that most small companies can't or don't want to pallette.
So, again, we are at the point of posing our original question of how to rapidly growing small companies stay on top of increasing customer demand and subequent orders without settling for unintegrated applications or the other, less desirable alternative of killing cash flow with an expensive ERP system that requires constant upkeep? Simply put, SAP Business ByDesign. SAP ByDesign is a very affordable (even for small companies, as little as $11/user/month) and fully integrated ERP solution that covers CRM, HRM, supply chain management, project management, and financials, that can manage the changing complexities of your small business.
SAP ByDesign has power capabilities that include ATP (Available-to-Promise) functionality that will notify your sales and customer service teams when products are out-of-stock in real time, as well as propose realistic deliver days based on lead times and stock turnover. The system further can continually monitory inventory levels and automatically notify warehouse staff that orders need to be placed and are ready for fulfillment. This automatic release of orders can be custom configured to prioritize orders based on your business requirements. Lastly, when a new order has been shipped, accounting staff will be instantly and automatically notifed that a customer should be invoiced.
If these problems are in line with what you face or anticipate facing, and are likewise looking for a solution that will streamline your entire operating procedures, especially managing customer demand, then look no further than SAP Business ByDesign.
To learn more, or register for our upcoming, live demo, visit http://nbs-us.com/demos/sap_byd/livedemo.
