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What is a distributor management system? How does it work? What does it do? How do I get one? All these questions and more, answered right here
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Considering the thousands of distributors across the world communicating and transacting with millions of other suppliers and retailers every single day, it becomes fairly obvious why a distributor management system is the need of the hour for FMCG and CPG companies across the globe.
True visibility over secondary and tertiary sales is of utmost importance when building a strong distribution structure around your sales and field teams. This can only happen when teams across multiple channels are in sync with each other, and have clear modes of communication while blazing through different points across the sales journey. CRM solutions for FMCG sales help with this, but if there’s no clear distributor management strategy in place, everything gets thrown into chaos.
In this article we’re going to take a look at why Distributor management systems are so important, how to classify the different ways in which these systems help you, and which one really takes the cake when it comes to distributor software for FMCG. Let’s get started.
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As we said in a previous article, data is everything in today’s world. AI and machine learning have made it possible for organizations to track and measure user behaviour to unimaginable extents, and if you’re not joining the bandwagon, it’s only going to be a matter of time before you’re thrown under the bus.
This rings true for the FMCG industry as well. Understanding your distributors, their order behaviours, tracking distribution and inventory, maintainin dealer relationships - all of these data points have become not nice-to-have but must-have metrics for your business. And just getting a good software to help you will not get you far.
Having a food distribution ERP solution is just the tip of the iceberg. What you need is the foundational strength on top of which a distributor management system can do its magic.
Your teams need to be structured and trained to collect feedback, store it in a central system, and have automated workflows set up to promote better relations between your distributors, your agents, and your backend teams. That is exactly what a Distributor Management System does.
So let’s understand how we can help set up better systems to efficiently manage distributor information, then take a look at how software can help you scale this process.
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A Distributor Management System helps you manage your secondary sales in a more streamlined manner, so that you don’t have to do most of the grunt work. With a distributor management system, you get inventory tracking, stock order check, supply chain management, and hunting down purchase orders and sales for your teams.
But perhaps the most important reason you'd need a Distributor management System is because it could be the single biggest game changer in taking you leap years ahead of the competition.
Let’s take the example of one our own clients. When we talked to BNB Sesame Oil, they were a team of just about 15 agents, yet diligent and strong-willed. They leveraged Fieldproxy smartly to expand their territorial market share, going on to generate as much as 80,000 INR in sales per day. That is insane for a small team that has nothing more than a smart app on their phones, and a good product in their hands.
That’s what a good distributor management system can do for your FMCG sales teams.
With features like real-time location intelligence, and agent visibility throughout the sales journey, both managers and distributors get an idea of where your agents are, what they’ve been doing, and the status of orders, at the click of a button.
This helps organizations greatly with predicting and charting forecasts from their secondary sales execution, in real-time.
When you’ve got intelligent AI-based stock and order scheduling to make sure every piece of company inventory is accounted for, you gain insights on how and where you can deploy them better, which regions and agents are pushing out stock faster, and how the entire supply chain strategy that you have in place is faring for your organization.
With a distributor management system in place, you truly have the next level of inventory and supply chain management at your fingertips. Get onboarded today!
With more accurate data-backed decisions made in the right direction, your organizations
can cut down operational costs by a lot. Our clients at Fieldproxy that have deployed a distributor management system have typically seen a drop in spending across their operations by 15% over a quarter.
Streamlining all your manual effort leads to your resources and agents having more time to focus on other important stuff, and get more done every single day. This typically results in an increase in productive work done across the board, and that just makes more money for everybody, so why not?
Okay, but how does a distributor management system really work? Isn’t it just supposed to be software that helps with inventory management for distributors?
Well, yes and no. Let’s take a look at a distributor management system and how it works kind of as a crm solution for distributors.
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A distributor management system is like a data warehouse for all your distributor contacts. But it is also so much more than that. A good DMS solution should be able to not just store and retrieve distributor data for you, but also give you actionable insights and steps to enact on the information you have.
Think of it as a smart application that helps you keep track of when your distributors are running out of stock, what would be a good time to initiate a marketing campaign, and sending out personal handwritten notes to their families on Diwali. Well, maybe not that last bit, but for everything else, and more, an end-to-end DMS is the ideal go-to.
Building up on our previous point, a software for distributors should be built around the relationship between your field agents and the dealers/distributors.
It should be able to recognize when a shipment needs to be made, notify managers of the upcoming shipment, help them create a proper route plan, identify who is best suited to complete the job fastest and most effectively - capacity planning 101 - assign the job to the right field agent, all while doing a hundred and fifty-five other things. That is the definition of a distributor management software that works for your business.
As businesses expand and operations grow more complex, managing field teams can be a daunting task. From managing tickets to scheduling jobs and everything in between, keeping track of everything can be time-consuming and inefficient. That's where Fieldproxy comes in - an end-to-end field team management solution that aims to simplify these tasks and streamline operations.
Fieldproxy's Distributor Management Solutions leverage AI and smart sheets to optimize inventory management, order processing, and supply chain visibility. It helps you improve communication between manufacturers and distributors, promoting better issue resolution times and faster deliveries.
With real-time data analytics, businesses can make informed decisions, minimize stockouts, and enhance overall productivity. It’s worked for 250+ clients across the globe, it will work for your business too. Get a free demo today!
Another important aspect of Fieldproxy is its job scheduling feature. With this tool, businesses can schedule jobs and assign them to field teams in real-time. This helps ensure that the right team is on the job at the right time, which can save businesses time and money.
Fieldproxy also offers a mobile application that allows field teams to generate quotes and estimates on the go. This is particularly useful for businesses that operate in industries where quotes and estimates are necessary, such as construction or landscaping. With this feature, businesses can provide accurate quotes to their customers quickly and easily.
In addition to generating quotes and estimates, the Fieldproxy mobile application also allows businesses to raise invoices and facilitate payment collections through integrations with popular payment gateways. This can help businesses get paid faster and with less hassle.
With features like customer happiness index, and historical customer data, ensure your customers are always satisfied with your products and services. Know exactly how your customers operate and provide better quality services.
Fieldproxy’s easily-presentable data dashboards and reports allow managers to make sense of all the data their field teams collect, in real time.
Create, curate, and manage different dashboards and reports to help make better data-backed decisions for your service teams.
There’s always going to be visits that clash with your agents’ schedules or that are of immediate attention. Question is, will your current route management process be prepared to handle it? If not, then you might want to consider shifting to a new system.
The old way to go about this would be taking a look at all your visits scheduled for the day and find out which agent has more time on their hands, then see if they’re closer to the client’s place and schedule a visit.
At Fieldproxy, we do things a bit different. All you have to do is, head over to Fieldproxy’s AI visual builder, ask it a question, and it will show you actionable data for you to interact with, in 5 seconds.
You instantly know who’s available and who’s not, and allocating tasks to your agents becomes child’s play. The point is, if you’re not able to prioritize your visits for your agents, you will have a hard time scaling your operations.
So why should businesses consider Fieldproxy? With its comprehensive set of features, Fieldproxy can help businesses save time, streamline operations, and improve customer satisfaction. And with a free demo available, there's no reason not to give it a try.
If you're looking for an end-to-end field team management solution that can help you manage tickets, schedule jobs, generate quotes and estimates, raise invoices, and collect payments while also providing customer feedback support, then Fieldproxy might be the solution for you. Book a free demo today to see how Fieldproxy can help your business improve its operations and customer satisfaction.
Book a demo and get two months free!
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