The Challenge

As any wholesale maven knows, success in the industry requires maintaining a close relationship with suppliers and customers and at the same time properly streamlining inventory levels and managing cash flows within the organization. Keeping all these plates spinning can leave a manager feeling like a sideshow juggler… and that’s just where the fun begins. When you add the unique challenges of the industry it may have some managers wishing they had chosen a career as an elephant trainer.

• Sizes, Spoilage, & Storage, Oh My!

  Wholesale businesses need to keep track of many varying pieces of data for each item – sizes, colors, series numbers, expiration dates, etc. If this information is not managed properly, it can have a big impact on your bottom line. For example, food expiration dates and spoilage are a unique challenge for wholesale food distributors since they are particularly susceptible to losses related to spoilage. To complicate matters, some foods also need to be stored at varying temperature levels. With a high level of inventory, many items, and a frenzy of warehouse activity, minimizing losses can be an extremely difficult task. In addition, gathering all of the unique data and applying it to particular items and their corresponding warehouse locations can be a conundrum..
  

• Managing Inventory Sprawl & Volume

  Wholesale distributors typically have large warehouses with high inventory levels. Tracking and managing these large levels of inventory, especially when there are hundreds or thousands of different items stored in multiple warehouses can be a real pain for managers and inventory personnel. In a warehouse that is not automated, additional time and costs are incurred when physical inventory accounts need to be made. Maintaining sufficient and optimum levels of each inventory item can be very challenging in order to meet customer demand. Too much inventory affects a company’s cash flow position, and is very costly. Warehouse space needs to be utilized at an optimal capacity in order to minimize these costs.
  

• Calculating Cost of Goods Sold

  Sounds like a basic business concept, right? However, many wholesale distributors purchase in large quantities from their manufacturers and suppliers. Commonly these purchases are delivered by a third party shipping company, who may invoice separately for the shipment (or shipments) of these goods. International wholesale distributors may have customs fees, duty, or other additional fees that must also be associated with the inventory items. Linking all of these costs with their corresponding inventory items can be a major task in itself, especially if the timing of the invoicing is scattered. If the additional costs associated with acquiring inventory are not included in the value of the appropriate inventory items, the profit margins on product sales will be inflated. This will lead to poor management decisions and a misinterpretation of financial results.
  

• Customer Satisfaction is King

  No business can survive without taking care of its customers. Wholesale distributors must maintain an open and available line of communication. Taking orders over the phone or fax lines may at times not suffice, especially during the busiest times of the day or year. It is also important for these companies to offer incentives and discounts to their most loyal customers as well as customers that have not conducted as much business as they had in the past, in order to retain and acquire more business.
  

• Accounts Receivable and Collections

  Granting customers a line of credit can be advantageous for generating business but companies must be careful to monitor the accounts closely to minimize credit risk and losses on uncollectible accounts. If a company is not diligent in preventing this privilege from being abused by customers, the cash flow of the business could become insufficient, especially during a downturn in the U.S. economy.
  

• Internal Organization

  Wholesale distributors typically have many departments, spread throughout the organization. Getting these departments to communicate effectively so that each department is adequately supplied with all necessary business information is a great challenge for many companies. Communicating with our colleagues and employees can be difficult enough when they are standing right in front of you, nonetheless when they are in another office, working in the warehouse, or in the field.

Comarch ALTUM Wholesales

Comarch ALTUM Day of Sale report	With Comarch ALTUM users can enter multiple features for each item entered into inventory. For example, you can enter the expiration dates for all of the items in your warehouse, then generate reports to show which items are approaching expiration, allowing you to determine which goods need to be sold, prior to spoilage, minimizing the potential for loss. When approaching expiration, you can then discount the goods to avoid having to discard the items. For goods that require specific temperature levels, this information, as well as any other information may be stored on the item card in Comarch ALTUM. Wholesalers in the fashion industry can enter data on seasonal items and discount those items as you move from winter items to your summer items. You can also generate reports on item fields in order to identify which goods should be purchased as sales trends change.
Comarch ALTUM Business Intelligence	Comarch ALTUM allows you to track multiple warehouses and an unlimited number of products in the system. The system will display quantity in stock, the quantity of items that have been ordered from suppliers and the number of items that are being reserved for customers. Additionally, internal warehouse movement documents allow you to monitor the movement of goods between warehouses, so you can manage stock more efficiently. To optimize the level of inventory held for each item, you can set up the items so that the users will be reminded when a minimum volume is reached and it is time to order a certain product, eliminating time wasted on checking inventory levels and helping to maintain sufficient levels to meet customer demands.
Comarch ALTUM Point-of-Sale interface	With Comarch ALTUM you can associate multiple invoices with the main invoice for your goods. Then these additional costs will be added into the values of your inventory and you can freely define each type of additional cost. If the goods are sold, automatic adjustments are also made to the cost of goods sold, ensuring that all of your financial data is up-to-date and accurate. You also have the freedom to set up Comarch ALTUM so that all of these costs can be associated with an item without actually impacting acquisition costs or the accounting. With Comarch ALTUM you will have access to detailed reports showing actual profit margin on products, customers or even single transactions. These reports may include associated additional costs, as well as, overhead costs showing how much your company is actually earning. You can also view reports that display your sales trends and the distribution of sales by product, customer or vendor.
Comarch ALTUM CRM interface	Comarch ALTUM gives you the tools you need to build and maintain customer loyalty. A point system can be entered on items so that your customers will earn a predefined number of points on each product purchased. Also, discounts can be set for certain customers so that all invoices to that customer will automatically apply their designated customer discount percentage. You can also use Comarch ALTUM CRM to track all customers and leads and further the effort to maintain and gain customer satisfaction and retention. Comarch ALTUM tracks all customer receivable accounts. You can define credit limits in the system to prevent selling to the customer if they have met or exceeded their limit. Accounts Receivable Aging reports are available to Accounting and the Business Intelligence module will help to drill down and perform an in-depth analysis of customer payment trends that may be affecting the cash flow position of the business.
Comarch ALTUM Mobile Solution	Comarch ALTUM delivers a mobile solution that automates the sales order process as well as the acceptance of inventory into the warehouse. Scanning barcodes on items with scanners eliminates the paper trail by creating electronic documents, which are provided to all users of the system as soon as these documents are confirmed by the employee with the scanner. In addition to the paper trail and the timing of these orders and documents, the necessary communication between your employee in the field and office personnel will be greatly reduced because all documents will be recognized in the system as they are confirmed. Comarch ALTUM’s built-in system tools, integrated business intelligence software and mobile data solutions can help you gain an edge over your competition and may just make you glad you didn’t join the circus after all.

Cost Reduction

Since the accounting process is almost entirely automated, you can cut out the extra bookkeeping required with other accounting systems. In fact, you may even eliminate the need for most of your bookkeeping activities once you set up the accounting at the inception of the system and all transaction journal entries are automated.
Comarch ALTUM provides over 120 standard reports in addition to reports that can be created by the user with the Business Intelligence tool. With these reports you can further interpret your financial statement - calculating which products/services make you the most profitable, which activities are generating the most costs, and how you can save money by minimizing these costs.
Comarch ALTUM is fully integrated with scanners and mobile solutions. Employees do not have to type items into the system for document generation but can automatically scan it into the system. This provides you with real time inventory on stock, minimizes human errors, and allows you to allocate resources more effectively.

Cash Flow

A combination of all of the available tools in Comarch ALTUM will reduce unnecessary collection efforts and allow you to immediately hone in on troublesome customers. The controls will help to minimize losses on customer accounts by bringing issues to the attention of the business before the troublesome accounts escalate. With a better inventory management system implemented, you can achieve and maintain optimum levels of inventory, freeing up the cash necessary for other business operations and growth.

Decide with Confidence

Given the proper data and interpretation of trends, making effective business decisions will be much easier. Comarch ALTUM will arm you with reports to simplify decisions such as whether or not to offer incentives or special offers to certain customers, whether or not a certain good should be given a discount, or reducing the quantity of a particular inventory item. You can make these decisions with the confidence of supporting evidence provided in the reports available in Comarch ALTUM or the Business Intelligence tools, which you can access and generate at any given time.

Internal Organization

Comarch ALTUM will help you streamline communication within your company. Since all departments will be working on the same database, they will have up-to-date information providing a more efficient organization overall and eliminating all those unnecessary conversations to update each business unit. The use of scanners with the mobile solution will help you transform your company into a more efficient organization, eliminating the use of manually generated orders while keeping all business units updated on all transactions. With increased effectiveness your company can devote more time to impressing your customers, who will notice an upgrade from the previous way of conducting business.
Each user has access to business scorecards. They allow employees to see what their forecasted goals are and where they stand in accomplishing these goals. Empower and motivate your employees by allowing them to see the impact they have on the business!

Impress Those who Matter Most

Using CRM, Loyalty Program and Business Intelligence will make it easy to analyze the trends of each individual customer to determine whether or not their buying patterns have changed for the better or for the worse. You can then supercharge your sales strategy to highlight well performing items or to nurture your most valued customer accounts. Having easy access to these trends can contribute to the long-term success of your business.

Comarch ALTUM is a complete solution that enables support for all business processes: purchasing, sales, finance, accounting, and warehouse management. Additionally, Comarch ALTUM provides you with advanced tools to improve your business. Every user has access to Business Intelligence and Business Scorecards. All of these functionalities combined with automated workflows will lower your costs, make documents and communications more streamlined, and allow you to better serve your customers. From Comarch, you can expect the best quality support from a single supplier.