Mid-Market ERP-Distribution Buyer’s Guide

Midsize distributors now have access to an array of powerful software solutions that simply weren’t available before. But with so many choices, you need accurate and unbiased information. This comprehensive guide from TEC and SupplyChainBrain provides a state-of-the-market analysis, success stories from your peers, in-depth information on solutions, and a directory of the leading vendors in the field. Download the Mid-Market ERP Distribution Buyer’s Guide or read on for a quick summary of how Microsoft Dynamics® can help you grow your business:

Sustainable growth within the distribution industry has to come from a strategic approach, using available technology to thrive worldwide. Here are 4 building blocks to focus on:

1. Improve customer service
   There are many ways distributors can cost-effectively deepen their local customer relationships. For example, you can create an online catalog tool that it adapts for each customer based on purchase history and that provides real-time inventory and order status. This self-service product information and ordering tool enables salespeople to spend their time resolving higher level customer matters, routing lower level issues directly to inside sales support, and prospecting new opportunities.
2. Manage business complexity
   The right technology can integrate distributor operations across multiple locations and free up your employees to address emerging business demands. Information-sharing tools, even commonly implemented technologies such as e-mail, can significantly increase visibility and communication across the company, helping distributors stay ahead of competitors by being faster and more responsive to changing market conditions.
3. Attract high-value employees
   As technologies help tighten the supply chain, talent will increasingly be the critical differentiator for distributors. You can bet your competitors are actively recruiting and training the next generation of employees.
4. Improve process, productivity and profitability
   Many distribution functions involve repetitive, low value-adding activities, such as transaction processing, fulfillment, and warehouse and logistics management. Distributors that find ways to free employees from those tasks to focus on high value-adding activities, such as solving customer problems, deepening vendor/customer relationships, and learning new product solutions, see significant increase in profitability. Great distributors work constantly on process improvement in every part of the business. They have key performance indicators (KPIs) in place that they use internally and share with customers to help benchmark their value and differentiate them from competitors.

How does your company measure up in each of these four areas? InterDyn Artis, established in 1989, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner dedicated to the implementation, training and support of the Microsoft Dynamics line of products including Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains), Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, and Business Intelligence.

By InterDyn Artis, a North Carolina Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner

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