Distribution

Each day brings new challenges for distributors, whether it’s pressure from growing competition, fading customer satisfaction, discontented vendors, extending supply chains, or other factors. One thing you can do to boost margins is gain control of your supply chain and our Modern distribution’s Advance supply chain module is designed to work seamlessly to optimize your overall supply chain performance and boost margins. 

Advance supply chain module integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform gives you a comprehensive solution to manage & address these supply chain challenges mentioned below:  

• Increased operational complexity – running on low operating profit margins 
• Shrinking margins and can your turn inventory over quickly 
• Shifting economics & knowing who your most profitable customers are 
• Questioning if your operational team is able to handle your growing business 

Our Advance Supply Chain module offers the following four programs to optimize your supply chain performance and increase profit margins:  

• Advanced order management - Get a complete picture of stock availability, backorder management, lost sales tracking, duplicate order checking, and more 
• Advanced inventory management - Provides full visibility into your inventory and includes features like obsolete inventory management, consignment inventory, customer reserved/allocated inventory, vendor performance management, and more 
• Advanced procurement management - Gives you instant access to all your procurement documents and vendor agreements. That means you have an edge when it’s time to negotiate 
• Advanced Revenue Management - Gain financial clarity, stay competitive, get the power to optimize pricing, and boost the bottom line 

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU? 

Quick Insights: Sophisticated business intelligence tools and a complete view of your inventory, orders, financials, and management alerts helps your team keep up with the needs of a global supply chain by making better, more informed decisions faster than ever before.  

Supply Chain Optimization: Improve supply chain efficiency and deliver orders faster with automated workflows and streamlined, comprehensive business processes. You’ll improve margins and customer satisfaction with smarter inventory planning decisions and more efficient shipping schedules.  

Outcome: Respond to the market, update prices, offer effective promotions and handle commissions, rebates and trade agreements, and Special Price Agreements with confidence and ease while improving your cash flow and building stronger customer and supplier relationships. 

Sonata offers its Ready-To-Deploy Modern Distribution platform that provides digital engagement with channel partners and consumers while ensuring the back end supply chain & unique pricing needs are taken care by supporting the dynamism in moving goods through multiple channels with its advanced supply chain capabilities.

To know more about how Advanced Supply Chain module can help your distribution to control margins please reply with your available time for a quick call with our experts. 

How our platform can give access to all contracts and financial information in one place and real time visibility to everyone in the organization 
 

Contract Management

Sonata Agri Commodity platform centers on Contract Management. Once recorded in the Commodity Trade CTRM, contract information is immediately visible across the organization, enabling financial and quantitative details to be updated and tracked.

As it progresses through its lifecycle – logistics, finance, and risk – the contract acts as the central repository for all transactions. Users can interrogate Commodity Trade at any stage for a contract status snapshot, drilling down on transactions for details.

Gives access to all contract and financial information in one place, visible to everyone in the organization. Provides real-time updating of all actions to improve data sharing between departments and streamline internal communications.

Storage Contracts

• Sonata Agri Commodity tracks third-party commodity held in company-owned storage facilities, including invoicing of storage and handling charges, by defining storage and charge schedules
• Identifying third-party commodity in store
• Managing and recording transfer of commodity ownership to other third-parties or converting to purchase contract
• Periodic storage invoicing based on storage schedules

Reach out to us today whenever feasible and brief you how our contract management module can benefit your stake holders in procurement operations.

New Ways of Internal Working is radically transforming internal processes and decision-making in organizations. Not only does it reduce costs but it also improves speed, transparency, responsive delivery, consistent synchronization, and customer improvement. This improves the interaction between retailers/suppliers and retailers to have demand for data-driven forecasting, asset management, and local order management.

The Digital Supply chain for expanded business has become an important part of an increasingly complex system of people, processes, and technologies. Only internal systems are integrated, finished sales have grown significantly due to the proliferation of computer networks and Internet tools and technologies over the past two decades. This establishment has opened the door to true collaboration between partners, distributors to extend beyond the four walls of the business.

The latest technological advances - the widespread use of industry-leading platforms and ready-to-deploy software, cloud computing, and mobile technology applications have worked to bring further challenges and opportunities to complete inventory management across the distribution channel. Manufacturers' distribution side has been forced to change or disappear when it comes to promoting processes and navigating the new technology platform and best practices for supply chain management. Most are well aware of the important trends and challenges and trade from the traditional to modern trading across the supply chain that is becoming more complex, competitive, and transparent. At any point in time, an optimized supply chain stays lean, manages costs, and perhaps most critically, responds instantaneously to even minor fluctuations in demand.

While there is not a single playbook to ensure success in the world's most powerful global market, here are five tips to consider for an improved Supply chain distribution business:

1. Distribution - The critical part of the manufacturing company:
   In the digital age, the expectations of distribution activities have expanded to include real-time visibility and, it has improved ease of use for recipients. Field personals in the industry, too, expect delivery jobs to leverage the technology that has made their lives easier with tools. Many organizations try to do too many things or do not realize that they can offer duplicate operations or single tasks or projects. For instance, determining the best distribution network; payment and testing of bills, or support for improvements to their information systems. It often seems that the internal resources of organizations can do better work overtime. Usually, relying on a special third-party provider, a better price will be obtained over time. Focusing on your basic skills will help you to grow your business.
2. Think Global but act locally for Operational Excellence / Cost Leadership: 
   This is not just a local reference, but it is also an important point to consider when considering strategies for the purchase of goods or price arrangements. Companies increasingly have to consider global investment opportunities and services, and when considering global business needs. Manufacturers should consider multiple digital delivery channels and determine appropriate levels of inclusion within the echelons of the procurement process. This is also important to monitor carbon entry levels and ensure the inclusion of raw material for sale. However, during transactions, it is important to add space to increase your investment in critical resources: infrastructure, goods, and technology throughout the completed supply chain.
3. Enhance integration between Manufacturer / Retailer and Vendor for Data-Driven Demand Forecasting for Order and Inventory Management:
   This will help organizations reduce inventory, improve fulfillment levels and availability of products where they purchase, and ensure fewer purchases improve margins and profits. Today, technology offers more opportunities for collaboration, increased data available to be mined, and advances in computer power and connectivity allow us to explore reliability in ever-increasing environments. And the platforms offer built-in features such as multi-channel engagement for fast B2B customer rides, third-party providers and suppliers, real-time visibility and listing across the entire distribution network, and adjustable pricing engine, Extensible & modular solution components open interface - standard application integration
4. Use Mobile-Based Technology for Field sales/delivery:
   These technologies can help to improve field sales, sales, and marketing, and enable customer-specific services (through location-based coupons or services that improve employee productivity in the sector). Providing information such as provenance, origin, content of the item and, specialized information on demand, sustainability, local content, or production method enhances the product. It enables companies to communicate directly with the customer. B2B companies can improve their performance through field sales by route planning, truck asset management, and paperless POD delivery through our mobile app.
5. Build a resilient Supply Chain:
   Utilize source data such as POS sales, as well social media information to identify trends and demand changes much earlier and enable your supply chain to respond faster to increase sales, improve service levels and reposition inventory to maximize true benefits. Multi-channel programs will change expectations from supply chain forecasting/planning paradigms to building responsive supply chains

Four strategies for a more resilient supply chain

• Inventory check: Buffer capacity is the most straightforward way to enhance resilience, whether in the form of underutilized production facilities or inventory above safety stock requirements.
• Supply chain disruption: The supply chain has improved over the past few years. This means that the cost of maintaining multiple supply facilities should be seen as the cost of doing business, rather than inefficiency
• Globalization: The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for diversified approaches. At the same time, however, working with underprivileged suppliers and end-of-mile delivery partners is also important to ensure better readiness and secure the future. For companies that do not have scales to support multiple areas alone, strong relationships with contract manufacturers and 3PLs around the world can be important in diversifying production and distribution throughout the supply chain.
• Redundancy and Flexibility: when a company increases purchasing volatility, it can withstand major disruptions and respond better to demand fluctuations. A strong business can be built by creating reductions throughout the supply chain. An organization can hold more assets, maintain lower power consumption, have more suppliers, etc.

Sonata's Modern Distribution Platform brings every component under one umbrella a complete set of features that allows Manufacturing / CPG companies to improve demand efficiency, enable B2B digital trading, and commit to the operation of the supply chain for their profit purposes. The licensing model enables businesses to select one or more platform modules according to their specific needs.

The wholesale distribution industry was evolving at its own pace before 2020. But the pandemic situation has triggered a lot of rethinking and turning the business model to be more efficient and pandemic free. Many wholesale distributors are looking for insights into distribution disruption and the forces that are shaping the industry. Some of the wholesale distribution industry has already started to implement new ideas and benefiting from the same.
Wholesale distributors are realising importance of going Digital and swiftly adopting Digital technologies. Also, they are increasingly started providing value added services like credit financing and Distributor managed Inventory. The changing status quo reflects several modern trends.

Below are some of the trends seen in 2020 for the wholesale distribution industry.

1. Direct to Consumer: Retail and consumer products companies are inclining to the direct-to-consumer (D2C) model, which makes them compete directly with the traditional wholesale distribution model. For example, Nike has announced that they will reduce their distribution partners from 30,000 to focus on only 40 partners. 
2. Omnichannel Selling: In 2020, many B2B businesses started shifting their focus from the traditional approach to omnichannel selling. With this, they are providing consumers a streamlined and connected buying experience across all platforms.
3. Growing E-Commerce for B2B Market: B2B industry is investing more in E-commerce technology in Retail so that the whole supply chain will be more streamlined and faster. Online wholesale stores can be more visible through search engines. Retailers will stay connected as a customer to the wholesale industry.
4. Expanding into the Global market:  As customers are increasingly buying international products, expanding into the global market is now very much essential for wholesale distributors. Wholesalers are investing more in digitizing supply chains due to the surge in demand for international products.
5. Inventory and Order management transparency: Wholesalers are more focused on implementing new inventory management technologies that allow them to make data-driven decisions and handle business operations centrally. So investing in warehousing and inventory management are among the top trends of 2020.

Top wholesale Distribution trends of 2021

1. Business Cost will rise: For the USA and nearby countries the import cost of raw material and goods for sale will soar. Shipping costs will also be going upward in 2021. Manufacturers will face difficulties in delivering value to the end-customers and they will look for innovative ways to control the cost.
2. Increased Technology Penetration: Technologies will be an inseparable part of the wholesale distribution. Small and medium-sized companies will continue to evolve with technology by fine-tuning their existing software. Larger companies will adopt some of the robust technology such as robotics, IoT, Blockchain, etc.
3. Wholesaler prioritize new supply chain technology: Intelligent supply chain planning technologies are now the topmost priority as distributors want to increase visibility into demand and supply planning. Distribution firms will embrace advanced aspects like Demand sensing, Optimizing Inventory, Multilevel planning, and Response management.
4. Next generation Digital Marketing and ecommerce: Wholesale distributors will invest more in the E-Commerce platform, so they can provide the same user-friendly ordering and customer experiences that their clients are used to online. By improving digital marketing techniques such as search engine optimization, they will be more discoverable. Online payment systems will fasten the price negotiations and settlements.
5. Role of Customer Experience Management: Wholesale distributors of the future will transform their thinking from meeting customer needs to anticipate and shape them, proactively delivering solutions to problems that customers may not even know they have. The trends will focus on effectively engaging customers’ demands innovation in executing the value chain. Customer experience management will bridge the gaps and play a crucial role in delivering value to the end customers.

Role of Sonata's Digital Platforms in building a Resilient Supply Chain

Sonata leverages the power of platforms to help clients create & implement platform-based business models. Sonata’s Modern Distribution is a future-ready digital supply chain platform with rich features and functionalities bringing together all elements to drive growth through new channels of engagement, ensuring channel loyalty and best in class margin management. 
The platform enables digital commerce with customers & suppliers, optimizes overall supply chain performance, and provides Digital engagements with Channel partners and end customers.
Explore our Distribution& Manufacturing offerings that help build a resilient supply chain

The latest trends are reshaping the Consumer Goods industry post-pandemic and the world is ready for it…Are you?

The consumer goods industry is witnessing an overhaul with rapidly changing consumer behaviour. Consumer tastes, preferences, and needs are evolving with changing global affairs like the pandemic.
CPG companies have launched innovative products to meet an ever-growing array of human needs and desires.
The consumer markets across the globe will see a lot of changes in the coming years. Asia will overtake the west in consumer products. Companies will adopt a lot of innovation to fulfil customer requirements.

The rising internet penetration also will have a significant effect on the traditional business model by the companies. 

Following are some of the future trends that will drive the consumer goods markets:

1.Innovation for a Reason: Constant Innovation has allowed companies to produce new products, the same trend will continue in the future. For example, In the US Grocery channel, the number of SKUs has increased by 50% in just the past seven years. Soon, a lot of new products will be available in the consumer industry.

2.Investment to Strengthen Pillars: To make this expansion possible—and profitable—CPG players will be investing heavily in building global scale along every part of the value chain, including R&D, marketing and sales, procurement, manufacturing, and distribution.

3.Perform or Perish: Over the coming decade, the consumer industry will find as much looser as winners. The top 5 reasons for this to happen are: 

• A countless new middle-class consumer in the emerging markets
• The rise of the digital consumer
• The shift to value 
• The Impact Impact of demographic changes that include ageing and consumption patterns
• Increase in volatile input cost due to shortage in natural resource and emerging large suppliers

CPG companies that produce value-oriented products will have more markets than others. Improving the quality of the products or making them available for lower price points will offer more value to the consumers. Both these methods have a positive impact on businesses as well. A leading global confectioner has introduced products at low price points in India to attract more consumers to the chocolate category.

4.Age of Digital Consumers: The rise of digital consumers is growing exponentially. In the coming years, a majority chunk of the business will be digital. CPG companies must find out some of the best answers to the questions to figure out how to win the digital world:

• How to build a successful business through online retail channels?
• How to build brands and categories in a socially networked world
• How to exploit technology-driven opportunities to understand consumers more deeply and connect with them more often?

5.Digital Branding: Digital technology will have a deep impact on brand communication. Consumers are more reliant than ever on referrals: 70 per cent looks to user reviews to inform their purchase decisions. Moreover, digital marketing is no longer just about one-way communications to consumers.

6.Understanding Consumers Better than Before: The impact of demographic shifts on consumption patterns: While ageing represents one major global demographic trend for which CPG companies must prepare to tackle it. CPG companies will need to find innovative ways to meet the needs of ageing consumers. For example, Unilever’s Dove recently launched Pro-Age, a line of deodorants, hair care products, and skin care products, to target female consumers of the age group between 54 and 63. A major packaged food manufacturer is targeting seniors with its latest brand that offers nutritionally balanced food in packaging that features easy-to-read, large fonts. 

7.Supply Chain Volatility- the New Normal: For the most successful CPG companies, globalized trading has represented an opportunity to expand into new markets and consolidate supply and production. Globalization led specialization has also triggered a sharp increase in the global volatility of commodity input prices. Global Supply chains that had created value in the past can experience higher volatility in the future.

Role of Sonata's Digital Platforms in building a Resilient Supply Chain
Sonata leverages the power of platforms to help clients create & implement platform-based business models. Sonata’s Modern Distribution is a future-ready digital supply chain platform with rich features and functionalities bringing together all elements to drive growth through new channels of engagement, ensuring channel loyalty and best in class margin management. 

The platform enables digital commerce with customers & suppliers, optimizes overall supply chain performance, and provides Digital engagements with Channel partners and end customers.
Visit our Distribution& Manufacturing offering page to explore the Digital platforms that help build a resilient supply chain. 
 

The pandemic situation induced an economic shock that affected most of the CPG companies. While most the CPG firms battled the crisis, the supply chain difficulties, changing consumer behavior, increased regulations by the governments and workplace restrictions are shaping the new normal.CPG companies are embracing Digital Technologies and alternative channels to market and engage with consumers.

Digital Supply Chain

The digital supply chain is the modern supply chain concept that’s widely being implemented, A supply chain can be termed as a digital supply chain when advanced digital technologies like IoT, blockchain, machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics are integrated into the supply chain ecosystem.

Supply chain leaders are planning to make the supply chain more trackable with sensors attached to containers of all format connected to the supply networks.

Active collaboration is required between Sales, manufacturing, logistics and all the functions which are responsible for the supply chain operations, improve supply chain performance, order fulfillment and thus the customer satisfaction. The collaboration and automation required is possible with Digital Supply chain systems.

Importance of Digital Supply chain for CPG brands

Supply chain efficiency and improved margins are key to CPG brands as they deal with low price and high-volume product lines.

Source: BCG

Digital supply chain technologies are helping the CPG firms tackle the replenishment and forecast problems

• Predictive analytics for accurate demand-forecast and optimized inventory management
• Automated replenishment

Direct to consumer channels

An e-commerce website must be considered part of the digital supply chain as there is an increasing trend of consumers shopping directly from the brands.

Source: McKinsey

Brand websites play multiple roles; they provide insights on consumer behavior, help in improving consumer experience and personalized promotions apart from acting as sales drivers.Navigating the “New Normal”

The connected supply chain concept is being adapted by the CPG Industry, where consumer, retailers, distributors, and Brands relate to help of Digital Technologies. Connectedness when coupled with Intelligence can help achieve supply chain resilience.

CPG players are improving the forecasting algorithms and embracing ERP integrated forecast systems to cut through the demand uncertainties.

According to a survey by BCG, 21% of the CPG firms responded have a vision for the digital supply chain and another 58% are working toward such a vision. About 26% of the CPG companies they have surveyed said that “digital in the supply chain” is a top priority for the business, and about half reported piloting 15 or more digital use cases.

This shows going Digital is the right strategy to improve the CPG supply chain efficiency and thus improving customer satisfaction.

Role of Sonata's Digital Platforms in building a Resilient Supply Chain

Sonata leverages the power of platforms to help clients create & implement platform-based business models.

Sonata’s Modern Distribution is a future-ready digital supply chain platform with rich features and functionalities bringing together all elements to drive growth through new channels of engagement, ensuring channel loyalty and best in class margin management. 
 The platform enables digital commerce with customers & suppliers, optimizes overall supply chain performance, and provides Digital engagements with Channel partners and end customers.

Visit our Distribution& Manufacturing offering page to explore the Digital platforms that help build a resilient supply chain

The Covid-19 pandemic has crippled the global supply chain systems causing Supply network disruptions for many organizations across the world.While Some organizations like the largest Milk co-operative of India successfully sustained the COVID Impact, Organizations across the globe are penning alternative Supply Chain and sourcing strategies to sustain future risks based on the foreseen scenarios.
Global Supply chain experts emphasising on building highly resilient supply chains with the focus on:

1. Improved supply chain visibility
2. Risk Mitigation and Cost Reduction
3. The transition from Traditional to Digital Supply Networks
4. Building a Resilient Supply chain

Improved supply chain visibility

According to a Survey by Dun & Bradstreet, At least 51,000 companies  which include 163 of the   Fortune 1000 around the world have one or more direct or Tier 1 suppliers in the Pandemic impacted regions of China, and at least five million companies which include 938 of the  Fortune 1000 have one or more Tier 2 suppliers in the impacted regions of China.
With the traditional supply chains spread across the countries, it is very difficult to get the visibility over the Tier 2 and further tier Suppliers where the organizations usually do not have a direct connect.
To keep discontinuity at check especially with the high risk category suppliers: Packaging material suppliers and logistics partners, Organizations are adopting novel Risk assessment approaches. Digital transformation is Vital to gain visibility over Tier 2, and tertiary suppliers.
 

Risk Mitigation and Cost Reduction

Organizations are adopting tools and technologies that provide deep supply chain intelligence. Modern Technologies like AI and ML can predict future pandemics and other challenging trends patterns. 

Global firms are reducing their variable costs and focusing on keeping the cash flows positive.
By aligning the internal IT to the flexible working models, companies are enabling Remote work and thus reducing the disruptions that are caused due to employee absenteeism.

Buying additional inventory as strategic safety stocks, enabling flexible payment options are some of the other practices to keep the costs under control.

Transition from Traditional Supply chain to Digital Supply Network

Source:McKinsey

Today, Advanced technologies can help build a highly resilient supply chain less difficult. Technologies like Cloud computing, AI/ML, IoT, 5G and robotics can help build the future-ready digital supply 
Companies are learning from the pandemic and being prepared for the force majeure events.

Building a Digital Supply Network eliminates the linearity of the supply chain induces dynamism thus establishes resilience.

Building Resilient Supply chain

The learnings from the pandemic are helping organizations to understand stand their supply chains better and reemphasising the focus to establish resilience.There is also an increasing trend of revisiting the Asia-Pacific operating models.

Improved engagements with end customers and suppliers using Digital mediums is another characteristic of a resilient supply chain. While it is difficult to define a common definition of risk for all the industries, the focus is on mitigating risks and building a resilient supply chain that withstands the supply disruptions. 

Role of Sonata's Digital Platforms in building a Resilient Supply Chain

Sonata leverages the power of platforms to help clients create & implement platform-based business models.
Sonata’s Modern Distribution is a future ready digital supply chain platform with rich features and functionalities bringing together all elements to drive growth through new channels of engagement, ensuring channel loyalty and best in class margin management. 
The platform enables digital commerce with customers & suppliers, optimizes overall supply chain performance and provides Digital engagements with Channel partners and end customers.
Visit our Distribution& Manufacturing offering page to explore the Digital platforms that help build a resilient supply chain. 

For any successful distribution & manufacturing company, it’s important to address a new way to streamline its operations. Beginning from the trading of commodity and the distribution of derivatives, manufacturing is an intricate process with multiple moving parts. Due to the rapid development of the digital world and the broad advantages of data analytics, various fields of the industry sectors seeking improvement. Distribution & manufacturing is also a major industry that is not behind of adopting advanced technology. Manufacturing business faces huge transformations nowadays, distribution & supply chain also transforming at the same velocity. Advanced technology frequency having the capacity to fine-tune the manufacturing and distribution industry’s desire. Data and analytics users’ numbers also have increased drastically to drive manufacturing, distribution, and logistics management in a new age.

Data & Analytics is the art of analyzing/visualizing raw data in order to derive value proposition decision from historical information. Several backend processes independently extract, transform and load the data into an automated system to provide us with the desired result. These mechanical processes and algorithms help us to transform the raw data into meaningful information, out of which actionable insights can be derived.

Importance of Data & Analytics in Distribution & Manufacturing industry

Distribution & manufacturing industries are changing due to demand in the retail industry. The distribution and manufacturing process have diversified their operational processes and technology adoption as well. According to industry expert analytics can fill the gap between distribution and manufacturing departments, increase efficiency and help them becoming lean departments.

• Operations managers can use advanced analytics to analyze historic data of raw materials
• Analytics can improve manpower resource performance by 13%
• Analytics can help to manage warehouse operations efficiently
• Manufacturing time can be saved around 23% in inventory operation & Production planning
• Distribution performance can increase by 27% using analytics

Technology disruption demands decent margin pressure on the industry, however online wholesale marketplaces welcome the analytics role gratefully. As per a recent survey, 51% of the manufacturing leaders have integrated market analytics into the ERP system, which means they can take better evidence-backed decisions and prepare future proof operational plan more accurately.
Key features of Analytics:

• Real-time visibility of entire organization process
• Automated business event notifications
• Custom reports generated in automated systems
• Demand planning & forecasting
• Advanced warehouse management
• Real-time collaboration across all departments
• Ability to share and integrate data with the extended enterprise cloud systems

Four main stages of data & analytics, Big Data adoption and progression along a continuum: 

• Educate (building a base of knowledge): 29% of industrial manufacturing respondents
• Explore (defining the business case and roadmap): 42% of industrial manufacturing respondents
• Engage (embracing big data): 25% of industrial manufacturing respondents
• Execute (implementing big data at scale): 4% of industrial manufacturing respondents.

Analytics provide inspired insights that could narrate future business practices, 67% of manufacturing companies prefer to use big data analytics to tackle the issue arise at every notch of the manufacturing process. Implementation of Data & Analytics can improve manufacturing performance at the beginning of the product development journey.

On the other-hand distribution of raw materials to manufacturers and derivatives distribution to end users also generate a similar proportion of raw data and the necessity of analytics scope too. Precisely distribution network also consists of specific application systems that having the pervasive scope of analytics. 

Example: A leading food manufacturer proactively identified the impact of pricing tactics adopted by its retail channel partners on the volume sales. The analytics framework helped the pricing managers make more informed decisions by evaluating multiple scenarios and planning.

Result: manufacturer identified a group of stores (up to 56%) that had the potential to increase the price of a product up to a difference of $ 0.25 from its closest competitor without impacting sales. This had a potential revenue upside ranging from 2% to 3%

Distribution and manufacturing organizations could take advantage of the enormous amount of data that is increasing every year from the embedded and connected devices and applications – such as sensors, measuring meters, IoT, inventory management, accounting & order management. It turns out after all that integrated automated control systems can and do generate insights which are extremely valuable. As per a recent survey, approximately 34% of those companies generated annual savings in quality costs of more than 25% per year; the same proportion reported 25% or better improvements in efficiency annually by taking insights from connected devices. 

Immediate improvements and positive impacts on the bottom line are available through effective collection & harvesting of data from the manufacturing sites, but they need the means to do this. Business intelligence, analytics for big data, and analytics powered by AI can provide comprehensive service which is listed in our Data & Analytics portfolio to build a sustainable future-proof foundation to your digital transformation journey. That's why an investment in a comprehensive analytics system of solution which fits the current infrastructure requirements of a company, as well as being flexible enough to have its future needs covered, makes so much sense.

The growing popularity of e-commerce for retail has had a significant impact on distribution as well. As per the Digital commerce 360 report, 41% of wholesalers surveyed call eCommerce their top sales channel, up from 31% that the same survey had indicated, an year earlier. 88% B2B purchasers prefer to shop via eCommerce, according to an MDM - Baird Distribution Survey.

Not surprisingly, this has created a major disruption in the distribution industry. Companies are going online to gather information about products. Goods are being shipped directly to retailers or consumers by manufacturers. Online purchases are shipped directly from manufacturers with the entry of drop shippers. Mega retailers buy most of their merchandise directly from manufacturers.

What does it mean for traditional distributors?

If you’re a traditional distributor it’s time to urgently invest in robust technology infrastructure that enables seamless collaboration with customers and provides real-time visibility; if you don’t want to lose market share to new age online distributors.

In other words, you need to prepare to win in the new economy by transforming yourself into a digital ready Modern Distributor.

Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform

Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform is designed to help Wholesale DistributorsPlan for Profit by protecting their margin at order and line item level.

Our aim is to move you to a B2B eCommerce environment, thereby enabling you to increase productivity and reduce order lead time. Our Smart mobile route to market can help improve field sales productivity by providing real-time visibility to sales while in the field.

Click here to know more about how you can transform your distribution business for the digital era?

As competitive forces and margin pressure reign supreme, manufacturers and distributors are bracing themselves for what’s ahead in 2018. While some are embracing the challenges and responding to the current marketplace by taking advantage of those challenges and preparing for growth, there are several who are still scrambling to adapt.

Here are the biggest trends that we are seeing in 2018. By developing a plan for these trends, there is an opportunity for executive leadership to convert challenges into opportunities.

Better Customer Transaction Management

Mundane tasks such as manual order processing offer no incremental value to the customer relationship. In fact, manually keying in purchase orders arriving from customers lengthens order cycle times and introduces an opportunity for errors. This creates a scenario that makes customers open to switching due to a poor transaction experience. Thankfully has the potential to alleviate the burden of manual entries. Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform, through its integrated B2B e-Commerce portal, helps customers get their orders quickly and with complete accuracy thereby allowing inside sales reps to focus on meeting the needs of their customers and profit-generating activities.

The Elephant in the Room: Amazon Business

The entry of Amazon Business is set to bring about a complete paradigm shift in the Distribution industry. Instead of considering Amazon Business as a threat, distributors can use Amazon as another sales channel for inventory that doesn’t require a lot of customer service or product support. This presents the requirement of speedy order fulfillment and transaction processing. To take advantage of Amazon Business, companies need to adhere to the processing parameters. Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform helps take your products to any online channels thru its multi-channel capabilities. Apart from B2B and B2C, it helps you to take your products to any e-Marketplace.

Understanding Customers with Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is data that resides in formats such as email. It’s typically not something that most distributors think about when making operational business decisions based on sales channel data. Distributors look to typical digital touchpoints like e-commerce for customer behavior data that informs strategic decision making. Now, we are seeing that unstructured email data can be re-organized and analyzed with the right tools to deliver a true view of customer activity. Distribution Analytics which is part of Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform is the right tool that delivers a true view of customer activity like buying trends, key customers, volume, timing, etc. which can help with forecasting and inventory management.

Re-examining the Cost to Serve Customers

Distributors most frequently view the total sale or gross margin as a success metric. When customer exceptions within these transactions occur, however, it can significantly increase cycle times and operational costs to serve. Therefore, distributors are now looking at the entire transaction from order placement to order fulfillment, rather than merely the total value.

Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform has the best-in-class margin protection for unified Digital wholesale operations catering to all modern channels of engagement through unified digital operations capabilities. It has the best cost to serve report that can help reveal where operations are impacting profitability

Addressing the impact of Digital Transformation

A potential downside of digitizing business processes is the possible erosion of customer satisfaction. Companies often implement transformations with a goal of reducing operational costs and increasing efficiency without understanding the risk of compromising customer loyalty.

Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform is the only solution that allows business to reap the benefits of Digitization and simultaneously maintain high-quality customer service. The platform reduces manual processing costs by 80% and decreases order cycle times while processing orders with complete accuracy. This means customer satisfaction increases, all the while reducing a company’s cost to serve.

Click on the link below to know how Sonata’s Modern Distribution Platform can help to face the disruption challenges in Distribution.

Modern Distribution Platform