When you first started your distribution business, you rented out space in a warehouse that you shared with two other distributors. You fought for every customer and eventually began fulfilling orders for local businesses with your 10-year-old pick up truck. You met with manufacturers and with customers, and you personally accounted for every stock item in Excel as it passed through your hands; distribution management was not on your radar. You woke up early and stayed up late. You were the business.
Now you own two warehouses and have plans to open a third warehouse internationally. You own a fleet of trucks and can afford to hire workers and drivers. You distribute products nationwide and you meet with top executives at Fortune 500 companies. As your company has grown and expanded, it seems to have taken on a life of its own and managing your business correctly is now the biggest challenge you face.
How do you handle it?
Budding distributors begin easily enough. With only a handful of customers and a limited range, the idea of distribution management and inventory management software seems like overkill. It’s easier to scrape by using less extensive software to manage your supply chain. But as the business grows over time, many companies neglect upgrading their software to expand their capabilities, and even fewer plan their upgrades to account for future growth. Often, as the supply chain grows, companies will buy software to ease immediate growing pains. While this helps the company boost revenue in the short term, in the long run it stunts growth by not allowing for extended capabilities.
When companies box themselves in with limited software, they end up with a fussy internal network of processes. Each area that needs management – accounting, logistics management, data analysis, human capital management, etc. – just implements its own discrete software to handle the task at hand without properly connecting to any other area. This leads to an incomplete overview of all processes throughout the company, system and process complexity, higher costs, and lower employee productivity.
Eliminating silos and boosting productivity
The smart distributor is the one looking ahead and accounting for future growth. With disconnected software solutions, companies lose out on handling future revenue. Once a company starts experiencing growing pains in one area of the company, it’s safe to assume that they will soon be felt throughout every area of the company. So rather than putting a band-aid on one area of a company, look to optimize your entire company right from the start.
Investing in one overarching software from the start helps ease growing pains later, reduces costs in the long run, and boosts overall visibility and profitability. The most common software to achieve this is ERP; one of the key features for this kind of comprehensive software is also the ability to integrate add-ons in the future to expand capabilities.
Embracing ERP capabilities to enhance distribution
While ERPs used to only be available to enterprise-sized companies, the digital age has ushered in new options for small to mid-sized businesses as well. SMB-friendly ERPs are cost-effective and customizable, able to be tailored to fit the business needs. Cloud-based ERPs in particular are the best available solutions for SMBs looking to adapt.
When it comes to cloud-based ERPs, Acumatica is one of the top options out there. Not only is the software accessible from anywhere, but it is particularly designed for integration with other add-ons for SMBs to continually grow their market. Acumatica even has pre-developed integrations with external add-ons to make integration as easy as pushing a button.
With an Acumatica ERP and an inventory management system, distributors increase their efficiency across the entire company, improve their real-time visibility (for both the company and for customers), and save time and money. By continuing to grow their ERP with add-ons and inventory management software, they boost their supply chain to be the best in the market. For distributors, the best way to enhance their Acumatica ERP is with EazyStock.
EazyStock, like Acumatica, is cloud-based and has a pre-developed integration with the Acumatica ERP so integration is – you guessed it – a click away. With EazyStock, distributors gain deeper insight into their inventory overall and are able to reduce their inventory levels, boost their customer service levels, and free up capital.
Your profitable future with inventory management software
When distribution companies fail to evolve their distribution management processes in response to expanding business, they eliminate growth. Likewise, by creating a patchwork quilt of software to address different growing pains, these companies fail to ensure long-term success. With software like Acumatica designed with the SMB in mind, it’s unjustifiable for businesses to not invest in their future success and ensure expansion with the option to integrate add-ons like EazyStock to further expand their capabilities and optimize their inventory control with inventory management software.