I would surmise that the lion’s share of companies out there, particularly the companies that are considered small companies, are still operating in environments where there are reems of paper shuffled about. All of this paper, in the form of reports, orders, purchase orders, product specifications, etc.,  that is shuffled about is eventually stored away for future reference.

We have been internally testing a document imaging/storage product that integrates with our DistributionPlus software to prevent such environments. Countless hours have been saved by using the product, and we are excited to be able to offer a product like this to companies. A product that will save companies the kind of time that we have been experiencing.

Look for more details in the coming weeks as we introduce the docuent imaging/storage product.

Last week, there was a blog posted at Capterra titled, Can You Spot the Hole in an Integrated System. It is a great story, and very truthful, about distribution companies moving to larger and integrated software systems. In the article, the author (Ryan) states that smaller and more specialized software is often times more flexible than larger integrated software. In other words, “smaller” software, such as accounting software, is more flexible for accounting than a integrated package would be.

The article goes on to talk about trade-offs in software. When your company get to a certain size, and can longer function on multiple "specialized" software packages, there is a need for a larger integrated software system. The trade-off mentioned is this: while benefiting the company as a whole, some areas of the company (accounting was used as the example) will forfeit certain flexibilities that they have grown accustomed to.

My point in bringing up this article is that companies do not necessarily have to give up flexibility when moving to an integrated system. In talking with companies, we hear this over and over again that companies have had to modify the way that they run their business in order to fit the software that they chose to purchase.

The developer of the software should be able to modify, not customize, the software so that it is flexible. The software ought to fit the way you run your business, and not the other way around.

In what is sounding to be a service similar to PayPal, Visa is launching a digital wallet service for ecommerce shopping. Like PayPal, the Visa digital wallet will let you keep your information in the digital wallet, so that when you go to an ecommerce site, you don’t have to fill in the long forms usually required for the billing and shipping address. With this feature, I’m also making the assumption that, like PayPal, you would not be required to register at a site in order to purchase from that site.

Since this is Visa, there is a large contrast with PayPal in that there is no option to withdraw from you bank account; at least there is no mention of that ability in the article. The exception to this would certainly be if you were using a Visa branded debit card that withdraws from your checking account.

Implications for Ecommerce Site Owners

With a service like this, the consumer or buyer can remain anonymous on your site. They never have to fill out a form, leaving you with little information after the transaction has been made. How do you bring them back to your site again? When the buyer is checking out, they will have an option to opt-in for offers and future promotions. This is a really good thing, because they are actually giving you permission to send them promotions for your product.

Those site owners that store credit card information would not need to do that anymore. This means that you don’t have the liability of storing financial information of others.

Related articles

• Credit Cards Declining as the Means for Online Payment (cptechinc.com)
• Visa Looks Beyond The Card With One-Click Digital Wallet (gigaom.com)
• Visa targets Amazon, PayPal with its own digital wallet (zdnet.com)

Image via Wikipedia

In an article on Mashable, Bill Zielke cites  that online use of credit cards continues to decline, representing a sustained and ongoing change in consumer behavior.

When you are online and shopping, whether it be on your PC, notebook, or your smart phone, the physical credit card is just an inconvenience to pull out and type in the information from your credit card. Many consumers  also have the fear of posting credit card information online, for fear that it will be misused in a fraudulent way. There are online services (Paypal and Google Checkout for example) that make online transactions much more convenient and add a layer of security in that your credit card information isn’t necessarily shared with the online retailer or service.

What do you think? How do you pay when making online transactions?

Related articles

• Why Credit Cards Are Not the Future of Online Payment (mashable.com)
• 5 Dumb Things to Do With Your Credit Card (applyforacreditcard.com)

As a distributor, one of the key areas in your business is where your actual product is located: your warehouse. You may have a single warehouse or you may have multiple warehouses. In any case, an effective warehouse management system equates to lower costs for your company and premium service to your customers. Here are 3 key benefits to an effective warehouse management system.

Better efficiency in bin location management

Whether you have a large or a small warehouse, when there are orders to fill with several item lines on them, it can mean a lot of moving around in the warehouse in order to physically fill the orders.

A way to avoid this is to have your software create a pick ticket in the order that the item locations are set in your warehouse. An efficient warehouse management system should be able to to manage bins, or locations, throughout a warehouse, or even in multiple warehouses.That way, the people filling the orders will have a natural progression through the warehouse, effectively saving time by working more efficiently.

Less shipping errors

A good warehouse management system should have a proper validation system to ensure that the correct items and the correct quantities are being shipped to your customers. Too many incorrect shipments can be a profit killer. It is costly, both in manpower and actual tangible costs, to process returns and to re-ship the corrected orders. In addition to those costs, there is also the intangible cost of hampering, or even losing, the relationship with your customer.

Often times when companies are looking for a good warehouse management system, the order validation is an area that is overlooked. Make sure that your warehouse management system has the means to check your orders to ensure that all items and quantities ready to be shipped match up with the items on the sales order. Making sure that you get a warehouse management system that has this capability will reward you with ROI many times over.

Better customer service

Having less shipping errors is going to enhance your customer service and strengthen your relationship with your customers. There are other ways that your warehouse management system can help you to give better service to your customers. Through the process of validating the shipment with the sales order, your system should be able to record which items are in which box. This way, if the shipment gets split up, and your customer calls wondering where the rest of their order is, you can better help them by knowing the contents of each box, and the tracking number for each of those boxes as well.

If you have sales representatives that visit regular customers and place order for those customers, how are those customers being serviced? How are their orders handled?

Many companies that we speak with want that capability for sales representatives to access the DistributionPlus software, so they can have the information on hand to give their customer the best service possible. While wanting that capability, the request normally comes with the desire to have a limited scope as to what the sales representative can access. Requests such as, “I only want the sales representative to see the accounts which they are assigned to”, or “I don’t want the sales representatives to have the ability to see profit margins” are quite common. DistributionPlus has a remote sales system that allows sales representatives access to your system, but with these, and many more, caveats in mind.

Not only does the remote sales program give your sales representatives key information on their accounts, while they are visiting their accounts, but orders can be conveniently placed directly into your DistributionPlus system from the remote location.

Image via Wikipedia

Increasingly, we are talking with people who say something along the lines of, “your software will do everything that I need, but I’m wondering if we could also…”, and then they are off explaining something specific that is needed for a particular customer that they have, or a particular way that they have of doing things. After all, if your business is doing something a little different than most, its something that gives you a competitive advantage, right?

The point here is that you either have to have your distribution software fit your business, or you have to change your business to fit your software. “Out of the Box” software is just that, and is often difficult to “tweak” to your needs.

Now I’m not saying that DistributionPlus is custom software, but what I am saying is that since we are the developers of the software, it is fairly easy for us to change the software  to fit a particular need that a company may have.