Distributors: How To Use Technology to Improve Your Bottom Line

Date: June 25, 2013
Time: 1:00 PM ET
Duration: 60 Minutes

In this free, educational event, Jack Keough will host two expert panelists who will examine the role of technology in today’s distribution marketplace and how it can be used to improve your bottom-line performance. Sign up today to learn:

• Ways distributors can use technology as a competitive weapon in order to reduce costs, find new customers, and improve customer satisfaction.
• How your website can be made into an important marketing tool for your business operation.
• Specifics as to how to increase your business through e-commerce.
• NEW data from the ID Survey of Distributor Operations, discussing how distributors are using solutions like ERP, CRM, and e-commerce to their competitive advantage.

Joining us will be Steve Epner of BSW Consulting, an industry veteran who has been studying the distribution marketplace for many years, and will focus on ways for distributors to use technology as a competitive weapon. Additionally, Paul Scott, president and founder of the GoingClear Group, a Boston-based web development, management, ventures, and solutions company, will offer suggestions on making your site more navigable and how to measure and analyze traffic to your website. The webinar will be moderated by Jack Keough, contributing editor for ID, who has been writing about the distribution business for nearly 30 years. Jack will provide an overview of the survey conducted by Industrial Distribution and what the findings mean for the industrial marketplace.

Register For Free at: https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp

Demand Management Incorporates Business Intelligence into Demand Solutions DSX Platform

New Capabilities Help Companies Add Value Across the Enterprise

Demand Management Inc., a leading global resource for supply chain management solutions, has announced the availability of business intelligence (BI) functionality within its Demand Solutions DSX platform. The solution now incorporates native BI into its data tables to let users mine and share data efficiently across the supply chain.

“A common complaint among supply chain planners is that the most useful data lives in spreadsheets scattered across the business,” says Bill Harrison, president of Demand Management. “We’ve created a multidimensional cube that lets all stakeholders extract data from systems throughout the supply chain and work with that data through an intuitive web-based front end. By deciding which information they want to see and developing a meaningful view of it, users can learn more about their own businesses and make decisions that incorporate this knowledge.”

The BI functionality within Demand Solutions DSX is delivered by way of Foundation Analytical Packs that are available for the apparel, consumer packaged goods, energy, food and beverage, wholesale distribution, pharmaceutical and biotech, and general manufacturing and service parts industries. Users can leverage the best practices built into these packs to get their analytics activities up and running, but can also configure the packs over time to reflect the needs of their individual businesses.

“Our Foundation Analytical Packs are designed to save companies time and money,” says Harrison. “They incorporate Demand Management’s many years of experience working with customers in each of seven different vertical markets. We’ve done all the hard work of building the reports and linking them to our database so that customers can spend more time analyzing their results and taking decisive action.”

In particular, Harrison hopes supply chain planners who are frustrated at having to build their own reports will investigate Demand Management’s new functionality. These features can eliminate the need for planners to write reports.

“You shouldn’t have to implement your own analytics tools around your supply chain planning solution,” Harrison remarks. “Our BI functionality relieves this burden by providing complete drill-down capabilities from summary information into potential issues and opportunities. Ask us how it can help you extend your supply chain planning beyond the ‘how, when, and where’ stage and into running your entire business more effectively.”

About Demand Management, Inc.

Demand Management, Inc. is a leading global supply chain planning software company that offers affordable, easy-to-use tools for manufacturers and distributors who want to increase forecast accuracy, improve customer service levels and reduce overall inventory to maximize profits and lower costs. The company offers the Demand Solutions supply chain planning suite for forecast management, demand planning, collaborative forecasting and inventory planning as well as modules for advanced planning and scheduling (APS), sales and operations planning (S&OP) and point of sale analysis. Demand Management, Inc. has over 25 years of experience working with supply chain professionals and has incorporated best practices and real-world business requirements in its software from its extensive customer base in 76 countries. Demand Solutions customers include Lonely Planet, Trek Bicycle and Avery Dennison. Demand Management is a wholly owned subsidiary of Logility, Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Software (NASDAQ: AMSWA).

For more information, please visit www.demandsolutions.com.

Tenth Semi-Annual Advanced Profit Improvement Conference

March 19-20, 2013, in Scottsdale, Arizona, Sponsored By: Infor

Attend this unique, high-value conference that will help your wholesale distribution company become more profitable. This two day event packs in the latest best practices in using analytics to significantly improve profitability - in sales, marketing, pricing, inventory and more. Past attendees have achieved multi-million-dollar profit gains using the strategies and tactics learned here. View brochure here.

The Spring APIC Conference will be offering an expanded lineup of conference speakers, adding new perspectives and new techniques to the wide range of time-tested strategies. These people are the best in the business, with published authors and executives with decades of experience sharing the best of their knowledge.

Unlike other events, conference speakers are part of the audience during the entire conference. This gives you opportunities to discuss your business with some of the best thinkers in distribution. For each conference, the speakers update and expand their content, adding new information to suit an evolving market.

Conference Speakers include: Brent Grover, Jonathan Bein, Bruce Merrifield, Tom Gale, Tony Pericle, Mike J. Lamping, Jay Greyson, Randy MacLean, Margaret Reynolds, Steve Deist, Bruce Constantine

Register Now: http://images.magnetmail.net/images/clients/GALEMEDIA/attach/APIC2013Registration.pdf

SPA Strategy Seminar

Please attend SPA's upcoming Strategy Seminar to be held at the Ritz Carlton Ft. Lauderdale, Fla, on Friday, February 22, 2013 from 8:00am to 5:00pm. Equal parts strategy and practical tactics, the seminar addresses key topics that are particularly relevant in a recovering economy. This year's conference brings together an outstanding group of industry experts to offer strategies on driving shareholder value.

Register Now To Request A Seat: http://strategicpricing.com/events/seminars/FtLauderdale.php

This big-picture seminar is focused on strategic topics of importance to the owners, CEOs, CFOs and general managers of distribution and manufacturing companies. Experts will address the topics essential to accelerating the customer value proposition, competitive positioning and market value of any distribution or manufacturing business. The seminar addresses the strategic, analytical, process and cultural issues that are fundamental to maximizing shareholder value. The seminar will focus on the high-level, strategic and structural issues that are easily neglected in the hustle and bustle of daily business demands. It will help you to refocus your organization on the drivers of economic value.

United Stationers Introduces New OfficeJan eNewsletter

United Stationers has announced the introduction of “Roll Call,” a new OfficeJan-focused eNewsletter for office products dealers seeking to boost sales of janitorial & sanitation (JanSan) products, breakroom products and safety supplies. Launching this month, the eNewsletter will provide information and updates on key JanSan category programs and selling tools currently available from United Stationers.

“The ‘Roll-Call’ eNewsletter is designed to help dealers grow their share of JanSan business with existing customers, while expanding into new customer opportunities,” said Mike Miller, vice president of marketing and channel development, Lagasse and the Cleaning and Breakroom category for United Stationers. “According to ISSA, the trade association for the sanitary supplies industry, the size of this industry is $23.6 billion. That makes it a great target for office products dealers looking for incremental sales with strong margins.”

Newsletter content will include: industry trends, descriptions of current category marketing and promotional programs, updates to add-on categories such as Breakroom & Safety, dealer success stories, product overviews, and more.

“Roll Call” will be distributed via email on a quarterly basis (i.e. February, May, August and November) to a list of JanSan-focused United dealers. To opt-in, contact RollCall@ussco.com and provide email address(es) of those interested with the subject line “Roll Call.”

About United Stationers
United Stationers Inc. is a leading wholesale distributor of business products, with 2011 net sales of approximately $5.0 billion. The company stocks approximately 100,000 items, including technology products, traditional office products, janitorial and breakroom supplies, office furniture, and industrial products. A network of 72 distribution centers enables delivery of these products to over 25,000 reseller customers. This network, combined with United’s depth and breadth of inventory, enables the company to ship most products overnight to more than 90% of the population of the U.S. and major cities in Mexico. For more information, visit www.unitedstationers.com.

Seacore Seafood Relies on VAI S2K Software to Drive Unmatched Growth and Improved Economies of Scale

Leading Seafood Supplier and Distributor Hastens Route Management, Order Entry and Delivery while Improving Account Receivables Management and Inventory Accuracy

 

Seacore Seafood, Canada’s leading importer, distributor and custom processor of fresh and frozen fish, seafood and live lobsters, has achieved and sustained remarkable growth in the most efficient way possible, due in part to the installation of S2K ERP software from VAI (Vormittag Associates, Inc.). Recognized as one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies, Seacore capitalized on its inward and outbound logistics to make its consumer brand, OceanPrime, widely available across North America while managing more than 5,000 fresh and frozen items in inventory.  

From its state-of-the-art 75,000 square foot facility in the Toronto suburb of Vaughan, Ontario, Seacore houses its three distinct divisions – OceanPrime, Fisherman’s Depot and Seafood Depot – which serve thousands of consumer, retail and wholesale customers. Its extensive network of inward and outward logistics allows Seacore to buy seafood directly from the source – whether it’s trailer trucks picking up seafood in New England or Florida, flights arriving from the Philippines and Europe or shipments from Asia and South America. This allows Seacore to provide a wide variety of fresh, high-quality seafood ranging from crab legs from Alaska to barrmundi from Australia and salmon from Ireland.

To keep up with the growing demand for its products, Seacore automated many of its core business functions, including inventory management, accounting, route management, order entry, logistics and retail point-of-sale by installing VAI’s S2K software five years ago. Since then, Seacore has realized tremendous business benefits from this installation including:

• Improved Accounts Receivables Management
• 85% of Seacore’s account receivables are current which is almost unheard of in the food industry.
• Faster Customer Delivery Rates and Reduced Order Picking Time
• Seacore has hastened its truck routing process by 50%, ensuring extremely high levels of prompt customer delivery. Through the S2K Route Manager, Seacore was able to see all of its orders as well as the number of orders per route and then make the business decision on how to set up the deliveries most efficiently. And through the bulk and Wave picking, Seacore reduced its order picking time by 40%, which further increased its already impressive on-time delivery rates.
• Streamlined Fish Cutting Process
• By automating fish cutting, Seacore took three or four steps out of the process and made it 80% more efficient than it was previously. This allowed Seacore to save time and service more customers, thereby growing its business exponentially.
• Up-to-the-Minute Consolidated Financials
• Seacore can now view its consolidated financials at the push of one button – so they can see instantly how retail sales are faring hour-to-hour or minute-by-minute each day. This is especially important during busy seasonal periods like the Christmas holidays when the retail division realizes a 1000% sales increase.
• Greater Inventory Accuracy
• With three distinct divisions sharing a master inventory, Seacore wanted to do automatic transfers within each company in real-time. VAI customized the S2K installation so that if one Seacore division used an item that was purchased by another company, an automatic transfer would be made and the inventory along with the ledger accounts would be auto-adjusted to keep everything in balance. The S2K installation also introduced BIN locations to the Seacore warehouse, allowing the Seacore staff to know the exact location of an item especially when there are multiple pallets.
• Faster Order Entry
• Seacore was able to hasten order entry as well as meet specific customer requirements. For example, a customer may want only certain items sold to their locations and their own item numbers would have to appear on invoices. With S2K, Seacore can not only create order guides from their past history or from a custom list, but they can also restrict a customer to only buy those items.
• Automatic Real-Time Traceability
• Seacore can now do full traceability on where their seafood is coming from and how it was caught – information which has become increasingly important to retailers such as Whole Foods as well as its consumers.  With S2K, Seacore can now provide this information to customers in real-time.
• Integrated Point-of-Sale
• VAI customized the S2K implementation so that Point-of-Sale was completely integrated in real-time. This allowed Seacore to instantly see the inventory moving to Seacore’s retail store division from their warehouse.  Seacore was also able to add seafood industry-specific items to the POS implementation such as Catch Weights and a wide variety of unit measures that would normally have to be scanned.

 

“VAI’s S2K software allowed us to reach phenomenal economies of scale that could not have been attained by generic ERP software solutions,” said Sal Battaglia, director of operations, Seacore Seafood. “The S2K installation dramatically improved nearly every part of our business – from accounting and logistics to inventory and warehouse management.  By automating many of these key functions, our team can focus on critical aspects of our business such as sales and customer service.  And we feel confident that we can continue our impressive growth trajectory knowing that our business is running as smoothly and efficiently as possible.”

 

On Tuesday, September 25^th at 2:00pm ET, VAI will host a webinar, “S2K for Food: A Complete Solution for the Food Industry,” that will examine the unique challenges and requirements of the food industry. Attendees will learn how S2K Enterprise for Food helps distributors meet the challenges of today’s economic environment by automating and integrating business processes across the organization. To register for the webinar, please visit here.  

 

About VAI (Vormittag Associates, Inc.)

VAI is a leading independent mid-market ERP software developer renowned for its customized solutions and ability to automate critical business functions for the distribution, manufacturing, specialty retail and service sectors. An IBM Premier Business Partner, VAI is the 2012 IBM Beacon Award Winner for Outstanding Solutions for Midsize Businesses. VAI continues to innovate with new solutions that leverage analytics, business intelligence, mobility and cloud technology to help customers make more informed business decisions in real-time and empower their mobile workforces.  VAI is headquartered in Ronkonkoma, NY with branch offices in Florida, Illinois and California. For more information, visit www.vai.net, follow @VAISoftware on Twitter or “like us” on facebook.com/VAISoftware.  

VAI Webinar: 10 Reasons Your Company Should Be Using S2K Sales Force

VAI S2K Sales Force is much more than an online contact management system; it is completely integrated with VAI S2K Enterprise, giving your sales team real-time access to customer and product information, anytime and anywhere they need it. With this powerful application your sales team will be empowered to drive new business and make the most of their sales calls.

To Register, visit: www.vai.net/events