ERP for FMCG distributors
For distributors of packaged consumer goods who sell to many small shops every week. The hard part is volume: many visits, many cartons and a lot of cash, every single day.
What gets hard
Many shops, every week
A route rep calls on many small shops a day, often in streets with weak signal. Visits get skipped, new shops are squeezed in, and by the end of the week nobody can say which customers were seen, which were missed and why.
Cash and cartons that must agree each evening
Vans leave full in the morning and come back with cash, card slips and part of the load. If the stock and the money are not counted against what was sold before the rep goes home, small shortfalls pile up and nobody can say where they started.
Prices and promotions that drift
Wholesalers, large accounts and small grocers each expect their own price, with lower prices for bigger quantities and free cartons on the current offer. When reps keep all this in their heads or on paper, the same carton sells at different prices on the same street.
Credit for shops that pay late
Small shops buy on credit and pay when they can. A rep who wants the order keeps extending it, and the office hears about the overdue balance only at month end, after the customer has already taken another full load.
How Axon Suite handles it
A weekly plan the rep follows stop by stop
Put each rep’s customers on weekdays from a map, in the order they are visited. At midnight in your time zone the plan becomes that day’s route in the rep app. A skipped stop needs a reason, and the dashboard shows planned visits, visits done, unplanned visits and skips.
Weekly journey plans on a mapSelling goes on when the signal drops
Check-ins, orders, invoices, payments and returns are saved on the phone when there is no signal and sent once it returns. Each one is sent only once, however often it retries, and credit, catalogue and discount rules run on the server when it arrives, the same as online.
Selling from the van with no signalA blind count of stock and cash every evening
At the end of the day the rep counts the van’s stock, then the cash and the card or transfer takings, by default without seeing what the system expects. The office approves the close, and any difference posts to your over and short account.
End-of-day cash and stock closeOne price list per customer, with quantity breaks
Give a customer a price list of their own or let them trade on your default, and price each item by unit, with lower prices from a quantity up. Each line takes the highest quantity break it reaches, from the customer’s own list or else the default in effect.
Price lists by customer and quantityFree cartons counted for you
Set a promotion once: buy a quantity of one item and get a quantity of another free. Every qualifying cart gets its free goods as a zero-price line named after the promotion, in the office, the rep app and the customer app, growing with each full multiple.
Buy-and-get-free promotionsCredit checked on every order, in the van too
Every order is checked against the customer’s limit the moment it is saved, in the office and in the rep app. Over the limit, it is held for someone with approval rights or refused, as your settings say, and a collection frees credit for the next order.
Credit limits on every order
Guides for this trade
Questions distributors ask
What can a rep do without signal?
Check in and out, skip visits, and take orders, invoices, payments and returns. They are sent when the phone is back online.
Can a rep give a bigger discount than we allow?
No. Each rep’s profile says whether they may discount and their maximum percentage, and every order and invoice from the rep app is held to it on the server.
Does a promotion end on its own date?
No. A promotion applies while it is active, so switch it off when the offer closes.
Can we buy by the carton and sell by the piece?
Yes. Each item holds its stock in one base unit with its own conversion to every other unit, so a carton line lands in stock as pieces. A price list holds a price per item and unit.
