25 Dealers Selling to 4000 Distributors
Client: Large International Manufacturer of Consumer Electronics
Project
Our client was the North American division of a large international consumer electronics company. They had 25 independent dealers selling their products to a network of over 4,000 distributors throughout the United States. Before we came onboard, their dealers were faxing orders into our client’s main office. Our client would then enter them in their main computer system. The dealers needed the ability to view product inventory and enter and track their own sales orders. This would enable the dealer to be able to better serve the distributors who in turn sell our client’s products to local resellers and stores.
Solution
Our focus was to bring the 25 independent dealers live on a remote sales order system running locally on a Windows Server at the dealer’s office. This sales order system was a custom built, standalone sales order and inventory control system which obtained dealer specific data from our client’s main database server. Each dealer was able to enter and track their own sales orders and see available inventory. They did not however have access to other dealers’ information. At various times throughout the day, the dealer would access our client’s main database server to upload and download sales order and inventory data. This was the only access that dealers were given to the main system thus the dealers were limited to the data that was uploaded from our clients system to their system.
Results
Setting up the dealer access to the remote sales order and inventory systems increased customer satisfaction in two ways. First, the dealers were able to get up-to-the-minute product inventory so they could quickly and accurately advise the customers of product availability. Second, the dealers could now answer crucial questions such as “where’s my order?” within seconds. Allowing the dealers to enter and manage their own sales orders saved the client money by reducing order processing time and errors while decreasing the overhead cost of using their in-house order entry staff.
