Mobile Transformation Benefits In Wholesale Industry
The need for mobile transformation in Wholesale Distribution Industry is growing. Distributors are using mobile technologies to transform their business. In this article, we outline 10 benefits of mobile technologies that improves your business productivity and improves customer satisfaction.
- Brand Image: Don’t just be a commodity distributor. Build a strong brand, drive customer loyalty and improve profits. When your front line group – delivery drivers, sales force use sophisticated technology your perceptions among customers improves.
- Attract new generation workforce: Millennial are accustomed to new generation mobile devices. Embrace them to attract and retain younger generation. Reduce change management efforts and bring new employees quickly up to speed.
“In the warehouse, when you use mobile devices that younger generation use in their daily lives, there is no need for extensive training and productivity and employee satisfaction skyrockets”. – Procurement manager, a heavy machinery equipment maker, Illinois.
- Visibility into entire supply chain: No matter where you are, gain visibility into your supply chain. Make decisions faster and exceed your customer expectations. Reduce inventories, improve service levels. Use mobile devices and Ensure you have right products at right times at right warehouses in right quantities.
“Live up to Distributors core values – Reliability, Accessibility.”
- Close competitive gaps with tech savvy suppliers such as Google and Amazon: close service performance gaps and compete effectively with tech savvy internet giants. With falling prices of mobile devices and ever powerful functionality, distributors can deploy sophisticated technology that costs fraction what it was few years ago.
“For the midsize business particularly, where employees often wear multiple functional hats and may spend considerable time working from virtual offices, the connectivity that mobile technologies can provide is transformative.” – Simon Ellis, Director, Supply Chain Strategies, IDC.
- Mobilize Sales force: Never miss a sale with Mobile sales tools. Sales are the life blood of any organization. Yet sales people spend only 24% of the time in actual selling. This is the front line group that spends most of their time outside in front of your customer. They need access to customer data, inventory, and product information. Empower your sales people respond customer inquiries with resources such as marketing materials, videos, product manuals right on their mobile devices right in front of the customer.
“Having access to real-time information is a game changer in Distribution industry where our salespeople often struggle to make a match between what we have in the warehouse and what the customer is looking for”, a Sales manager at No.2 Industrial Distributor.
- Engage customers effectively: Your customers are always on the go. With the ubiquity of mobile devices connect to them in ways that were not possible before. Make it easy to do business with you. Whether they want to put a rush order, quickly browse the catalog, check their inventory, or lost an invoice, a mobile app can help irrespective of your customer is at his sons ball game or in the field. Be it an electrician, restaurant owner, plumber or construction worker, they are at their customer site want to place an order or check order status wherever they are. Don’t you want to be there?
See: Avoid Inventory Shortages with Inventory Mobile Apps for Oracle EBS
- Mobilize Warehouse: Receive shipments faster, update the inventory quicker to exceed customer expectations. Whether you promise instant delivery or same day delivery, your warehouse people can fulfill the orders faster and replenish the stock faster.
“By using a Goods Receipt app, companies can improve their shipping dock productivity by upto 100%. The value proposition of mobile solutions is unequivocal and saves lot of money, especially in big warehouses.”
know about Advanced Mobility Enablement in Procurement
- Faster Decision Making: No matter where your key stake holders are – empower them update Oracle systems in real-time, approve Purchases, vacations, time, credit increases. Enable your busy executives’ access mission critical information and respond instantly to changing market conditions. On-the-spot performance insight about key performance indicators speeds and improves decision making.
- Reduce operating costs such as fuel costs, shrinkage, wastage, product return costs, eliminate paper. Use technologies such as route optimization software and reduce fuel expenses eliminate thousand dollar RF devices, bar code scanners with $200 tablet and get completely out of the hardware business. Though computers digitalized most of the business processes, mobile has the true power to digitalize the process completely.
“Distributors use paper based delivery manifests, take signatures on paper, issue paper based invoice. For example, each manual paper based invoice costs $5. By sending an e-invoice from mobile phone, you could save tons of money every year”.
- Delivery & Logistics: Transform your delivery driver from a delivery man into a key point of contact between you and your customer. Enable him not only deliver goods, but also capture proof of delivery on a tablet or mobile device and update the Oracle systems in real-time. Empower him to process and pick up planned and unplanned return requests and improve customer service. With right mobile tools, your delivery driver can do many more tasks such as taking orders, offering replacements, etc.
Some other benefits are: Reduce hardware costs, connect in real-time, improve decision making process, improve customer loyalty, boost sales performance, and improve delivery performance. Looking at the benefits of mobile transformation, we are sure that wholesale distribution industries will take mobile technologies as a top priority in their digital transformation path.