Now, I’d like to take a moment to step back from manufacturing and point out that we don’t focus only on manufacturing or only on a particular area within manufacturing. If you want to talk about supply chains which we will talk about a fair amount, we are a great company to talk to. If you want to look at things like business process automation, whether it’s in your supply chain or not, we can do that kind of thing as well.
One of the biggest benefits we can bring is improving customer relationships that you have and do that through the better use of information technology, the better use of information. So, whatever your business goal is, whatever that low hanging fruit is, whatever that first project is that you want to get started off with, we’ve probably done something like it before and we’d be happy to talk to you about that.
Okay, enough of the ‘about us’ stuff, I’d rather talk about our manufacturing customers who have benefited from selecting our business intelligence solution, because that’s where things get more interesting. One of our customers is a manufacturer that produces fasteners, nut bolts screws that sort of thing. And they provide their fasteners to one of the bog box stores like Lowe’s or other types of stores like that. One of the things that their sales people have to do then is to go out to these stores and show them why they should stock more fasteners.
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And here’s one of the ways that they successfully implemented this BI project. They took information about all of the stores that they sell to and which ones are selling certain types of fasteners, and in one case let’s talk about marine-grade SKUs. Marine-grade SKUs, for example, could be a waterproof special coated screw or something like that. It could be very popular near waterways as you would expect from something that’s Marine-grade. Well, they took information about what other stores were getting from them and what they were selling through and brought it to those stores that were not selling that product. And they said you need to stock this product because stores like yours in places like yours are selling these through, and if the customer doesn’t see those things on the shelf, they don’t see this type of screw or turbine or whatever it might be on the shelf, they are going to walk out the door and go to another place down the street.
So, stock our product, it will make you happier because you're selling more of our stuff, and you're selling more of the other things that that customer would have bought. It will make the customer experience better because they’ll find what they need to when they come to shop at your store and of course, they knew that it would make them better because they’re going to sell more stuff. So, they were very happy to be able to provide that information to their customers who in turn were able to provide better service to their customers. It’s a three-way win for everybody involved.
You can see examples of what this looks like, and this is a rather confusing, now, Both of these two maps are actual screenshots from the application, by the way, where they can provide information about things like hurricanes. They bring a lot of information in to the application and show precisely what zone these people are in. they can drill down on the types of stores that are nearby and show the products that are available in them. So, by being able to help the sales person understand what the store needs, the manufacturer was able to increase their sales and everybody won out as a result.
Another case that I think is very interesting is from a food company. They are best known in the eastern area of the United States. And they really compete based on two major points. They sell the freshest food. They sell snack foods, potato chips, pretzels whatever. They sell the freshest food, and they want to make sure that you buy it from them, which means that they have to have the fullest shelves. They know that if you walk up to a store, and the shelf is full of their potato chips, you're more likely to buy their potato chips rather than a competitor’s, if that competitor’s chip display is not as full.
So, the interesting thing here is that they don’t compete really at the store shelf itself. If they only are competing there, then they’ve already lost the battle. They need to know precisely what each store needs in order to make a full and fresh shelf. So they empowered their delivery people to take information about what those shelves look like everyday when they go out. They have a constant stream information coming in right from those stores. And they are able to see how many sour cream and onion potato chips they’ve got versus how many pretzel rods.
And as a result that information gets sent back to the distribution centers, and they are able to load up the trucks properly in the morning to make sure that exactly the right stuff follows out. And they send historical information along the way. They have to understand what’s likely to be depleting at that time. But they are able to complete the order as they put it on the dock before they ever get to the stores. And that makes a tremendous difference to them and their ability to sell as I said the freshest food from the fullest shelves.