Q: What do you do if you’ve already cut operational costs to the bone?

A: Review your Processes and Systems – There IS a way of Doing More with Less!

Over the last couple of years, many companies have implemented some form of cost-cutting programme to reduce their operational overheads – but cost-cutting itself doesn’t make for a leaner and more efficient business – a business fit to cope with today’s customer expectations .

Whilst many companies have taken the steps necessary to cut costs, including stock rationalisation, staff cuts and closing locations, they are still constrained by the inflexibility of their ERP system to be able to radically change their processes and automate the 80% of the mundane business tasks common to all wholesalers and distributors.

John Brennan is Managing Director at Brentech Data Systems, with over 20 years experience in delivering mission critical systems to complex wholesale and distribution operations where excellent customer service, tight inventory management and real-time decision making information is fundamental to business sustainability and growth.

John shares his views into how companies should make strategic change to their business processes in order to achieve a low cost, high-performing business:

“Companies are not being strategic at all by focusing simply on cost reduction. Only by investing in their distribution operation, can companies gain real competitive edge from it. At a time when Customer Service is a priority, driven by consumer demand and increased expectation of product availability, this adds to the pressure to generate cost-efficiency and to speed up order processing times”, explains John.

"We must acknowledge that, in this economic climate, management is more concerned with solvency than strategy. However, an agile and adaptable ERP system is an asset that companies can use to maximise gains from automating processes - improve the cash-out to cash-in cycle, improve demand forecasting, improve order fulfilment rates and reduce the associated operational costs. To remain competitive and be able to adapt to changing customer expectations for availability and delivery, companies must invest in an agile system that delivers business intelligence across the whole supply chain”.

AWARDS-BA³ is built on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and has been designed and developed with direct input from customers with complex wholesale and distribution operations where traceability is fundamental to customer service and where the business needs to know quickly when, where and why things aren't happening as they should be. The in-built complex event processing (CEP) engine handles system changes through a simple administrative task which means that all system changes can be made in-house.

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