Computer Assisted Ordering
Who is in charge of you inventory replenishment? You, your vendors or your customers?
Inventory is traditionally replenished in two distinct directions: first from a primary supplier or direct via a company-operated warehouse or wholesaler; second from DSD vendors servicing the stores. From the perspective of smaller operators and regional independent chains, often all sources are considered DSD in nature.
Where conventional DSD packages content themselves with having approved products for delivery and leaving it to the vendor to put the right quantity onto the shelves, Midax uses its POS movement data capture and predictive tools to tell the vendor exactly what he should deliver to each store. In this way you actually return a significant number of SKU’s to your product mix, which now is specifically tailored to customer demand.
With MIDAX capturing all incoming product through receiving and all outgoing product through the POS, you have all the data you need to:
- Project suggested order quantities by store and across the chain
- Project on a daily basis or for several weeks ahead.
To do that, Midax has a set of intelligent routines, which with history, hones the calculations by projecting store requirements and then monitoring plan to actual. These routines capture and analyze:
- Transactional data
- Current rate of sales
- Sales from this time last year
- Current trends
- Effects of current ad on UPC and related products
- Point in time if item goes out-of-stock
- Weather
We keep a rolling history of movement by day of week, recent weeks history, TPR history, seasonal item history, same time last year history and so on and can therefore predict, using its routines for analysis of current trend, what the forthcoming requirements are likely to be at store level until the next DSD shipment.
Consequently, Midax can tell the DSD vendor what each store needs on each delivery. This means that DSD vendors no longer need representatives pacing the aisles taking inventory, when they can see the data on a web page from their office that shows the current inventory levels, store by store, current rate of sale and predicted future sales volumes. With Midax, product ordered matches to actual customer demand. You dictate what you need not what the vendor wants you to purchase. You have reduced unwanted inventories and increased the selection customers want.
Vendors' orders are also priced in advance of delivery, thus throwing the onus on the vendor to dispute pricing before a delivery, not afterwards. This has a direct impact the already disappearing mounds of disputed delivery notes, credit notes, debit notes, to say nothing of the internal discussions and pricing disputes with the vendor. The vendor saves time. You save time. Billing can move from the directed order to AP automatically through Midax Central receiving.
Preferred and alternative vendors are supported, with priority given to deals.
These calculations can be transparent to the vendors. Or you can allow vendors to access to their product movement and inventory levels online, so they can verify the validity of these calculations. Also, these projections can be reviewed by store personnel for approval and then transmitted in advance to DSD vendors prior to or at their arrival at the store. This allows the grocer to be more active with the vendor in the shelf-stocking initiative, while creating value and profits from satisfied customers.
