Information Technology can indeed help companies to stand out in handling the information in sales related processes. Here are the three main points how it can benefit you:
- Firstly, an industry-specific order entry system helps sales teams to find existing designs and their availability in stock, based on the customer requirements. An IT System offers an advanced search possibility to find designs using characteristics such as: application, number of elements, type of armoring, cross section area, etc.
- In addition, the sales team will be able to capture the details of the customer requirements in the system. In the wire & cable industry, these details typically include: the length break-down/put ups, the length tolerance, the drum type, length and clamp marking (e.g. marine cables). This information will travel downstream in the supply chain so that Production is aware of all details and the customer gets the products delivered in time and in the exact conditions as agreed.
- An important challenge in the sales of many cable types is the risk management of the high price volatility of the conducting materials such as copper and aluminum. IT can be used to execute various strategies of risk management. Amongst others, these strategies include automatic price adjustments on sales lines based on actual prices at LME, Comex, DEL, etc. Also, hedging strategies, periodic automatic settlements with customers and vendors or mass updates of price lists can be applied, all based on actual copper prices.
An US based cable manufacturer who uses InnoVites Cable ERP to manage their customer pricing saves 2 FTE by automating their pricing strategies with their industry-specific ERP system.
IT helps companies to deal with information about customer requirements more effectively and at the same time reduce the risk of commodity price volatility. This will result in a better customer experience and ultimately better margins for the company.
In our next blog we will discuss how IT can contribute to Planning.