One of the core challenges for the OEMs involves managing a second sales network. This includes managing distributors, ensuring stability in prices, and monitoring time-of-sale visibility, which proves to be ineffectual in generating efficiency, slowing down order times, and reducing revenue.
Intelli Commerce comes as a mobile app-based parts ordering software for secondary sales channels. By digitizing catalog management, simplifying the ordering process, and optimizing inventory, it helps OEMs improve sales efficiency and ensure seamless distribution of spare parts.
And now, with the advanced AI capabilities, Intelli Commerce takes spare parts sales to a whole new level. This helps the OEMs make the most of their revenue, enhance retailer satisfaction, and reach wider markets. In this article, we will explore in detail how Intelli Commerce's new AI capabilities are not only revolutionizing the secondary sales networks business but also helping OEMs sell smarter.
The Challenges Before Intelli Commerce
Before automation like Intelli Commerce, OEMs had always dealt with several challenges that often resulted in slower growth and a lack of operational efficacy. These included:
1. Lack of Sales Data Visibility
One of the major hurdles OEMs face is the lack of sales visibility in secondary network sales data. When retailers order via distributors with inadequate tracking, OEMs are unable to monitor actual sales volumes. Such a lack of transparency not only impacts the spare parts demand forecast but also raises the possibility of non-genuine or counterfeit parts entering the market, resulting in lost revenues and diminished customer trust.
2. Managing Constant Parts and Price Changes
Frequent changes in product catalogs and prices create a problem for distributors to keep the records accurate. If they follow manual tracking practices, it produces mistakes and outdated stock, which hurts profitability overall.
3. Order Processing Delays
Another critical issue that OEMs are currently struggling with is the lag that comes with order processing. When salespeople manually punch orders into an outdated and inefficient system, they create a huge delay in the fulfillment process, which subsequently leads to a lot of inefficiencies in operations. As a result of these lags, customers end up dissatisfied with longer wait times and a generally poor buying experience that fails to meet their expectations.
4. Limited Order Status Transparency
Transparency of order status remains a critical issue that cannot be ignored. Without the support of live tracking systems, sales teams struggle greatly to provide good and timely information to their customers. The lack of good communication regarding the status of orders not only causes customers to become frustrated but the entire sales process also gets delayed, ultimately reducing overall efficiency.
5. High Sales Team Cost
The high expenses involved in the operation and maintenance of sales teams represent a major challenge and cost for companies. Original Equipment Manufacturers have to spend significant resources on the recruitment, training, and maintenance of large sales teams that have to be utilized to process incoming orders effectively, as well as answer many customer inquiries. The high operational costs represent hurdles that hinder effective scaling of operations, particularly in global markets where consumer demand can fluctuate wildly and unpredictably.
How Intelli Commerce Solved OEMs' Issues
By automating core functions, Intelli Commerce facilitates seamless collaboration between distributors and retailers, enhancing transparency and efficiency, and driving a significant increase in spare parts sales. Here are some key features:
- Multiple Search Options: Using advanced search capabilities like VIN/serial search, QR/barcode, voice search, model search, and figure search, users can identify the right parts with speed and accuracy, ensuring efficiency and accuracy in identifying components.
- Distributors Top Parts and Order from Purchase History: Users can save a lot of time by navigating the catalog and ordering top parts based on their purchase history or the most popular parts in the network.
- Inbuilt Transparency Rules: An organized mapping system offers transparency into sales performance for sales executives, retailers, and distributors, making the supply chain transparent.
- Visual Identification of Parts with 2D & 3D Illustrations: Detailed 2D & 3D illustrations enable users to easily identify and authenticate parts, making identification easy and minimizing errors.
- Push Notifications: Sales executives get immediate push notifications whenever an order is placed by a retailer, facilitating timely response and effective order management.
- Analytics and Stock Analysis: Using historical order data from distributors and retailers enables accurate stock prediction at various warehouses, minimizing order fulfillment delays and enhancing overall customer satisfaction.
- Real-Time Order Status Visibility: Orders placed through the mobile app or web app are directly created in the OEM's ERP system. Additionally, dispatch details from the ERP are also integrated with our system, providing retailers with a single source of truth for both open and backorders.
- Omni-Channel Availability: Ensuring seamless browsing across Android, iOS, and web channels enables consistent availability and interface, resulting in enhanced customer convenience on every device.
Some Challenges Remained Until Advanced AI Features
Even with the fast-paced development of Intelli Commerce various issues in the secondary sales channel were still not addressed until the advent of sophisticated AI functionalities.
1. Poor Sales Route Planning
Traditionally, sales officers manually plan their routes based on convenience, which often results in wasted time, unnecessary travel, and lost sales opportunities. Due to an inefficient strategy, sales representatives end up spending too much time travelling from client to client rather than maximizing engagement.
2. Inefficient Inventory Management
Most OEMs rely on outdated systems, which make it difficult to control moving inventory, often resulting in overstock or understock, leading to inefficiencies, order delays, and revenue loss.
4. Inability to Offer Targeted Pitches
Sales representatives typically use basic product presentations, resulting in low attention and conversion rates. In the absence of AI insights, they lack individualized sales methods based on customer preferences.
5. Manual Payment Tracking and Collection Issues
In most cases, members of the sales team execute manual recording of all transactions, follow up the collections, and update the corresponding invoices. Without real-time monitoring and automated reminders, OEMS are unable to maintain a consistent cash flow, as delayed payments impede financial planning and operational effectiveness. Moreover, the absence of transparency in collecting payments makes it challenging to determine late accounts and take prompt action.
Thus, to overcome these challenges, businesses are required to embrace AI-powered automation to maintain stable cash flow and long-term growth.
New AI-Powered Advanced Features of Intelli Commerce for 5X Revenue Growth
To supercharge revenue growth for OEMs, Intelli Commerce uses cutting-edge AI technology to make the sales process smoother.
These advanced features enable OEMs to maximize productivity, optimize inventory, improve spare parts distribution, and make data-driven decisions, resulting in increased efficiency and profitability in the secondary sales channel.
Here are the new advanced features that drive 5X revenue:
1. Route Planner: Boost Sales Executive Productivity
The route planner helps distributors optimize daily routes for sales executives, who access them via a mobile app. This ensures efficient scheduling, maximized productivity, and streamlined visits to retailers for improved sales performance.
2. Save Time with Smart Route Optimization
Unplanned routes often lead to more travel time and inefficiency. Intelli Commerce suggests the shortest route for daily visits and considers real-time tracking of traffic and location coordinates. This enhances performance, the number of consumers visited daily, and most importantly, travel fatigue, leading to enhanced revenue growth.
3. Geolocation-Based tracking and attendance
The geolocation tracking and attendance feature allows sales executives to mark attendance with geo-tagging. This eliminates the risk of false visit claims, as it keeps the record transparent with real-time location tracking. Additionally, it helps sales executives apply for and track leave balances within the app, eliminating the need to make calls or send messages for such requests.
4. Seamless payment collection & financial transparency
Another AI feature of Intelli Commerce it streamlines cash records, cheques, and digital payments directly in the app. Also, it helps to access the retailer ledger for past transactions, which ensures a smooth collection process for sales executives.
5. Empower Sales Executive with AI-powered Sales Pitch
Intelli Commerce analyzes past orders, slow-moving stock, and ongoing offers to generate AI-assisted discussion points for sales reps, boosting retailer satisfaction, improving engagement, and maximizing sales opportunities.
6. Optimize Dead Stock & Run Strategic Promotions
Intelli Commerce leverages AI to analyze slow-moving inventory, enabling OEMs and distributors to create and manage discounts and promotions. This drives higher sales while minimizing stock obsolescence and maximizing profitability.
7. Data-Driven Decision-Making for OEMs
OEMs can visualize region-wise sales data alongside units in operation on an interactive Indian map. Plus, they can identify high-potential areas for new distributors and retailers, enabling strategic expansion and data-driven decision-making.
Business Benefits with Intelli Commerce
With Intelli Commerce, OEMs can unlock new levels of efficiency, sales growth, and enhance customer satisfaction. Below are the key benefits that make it a game-changer for spare parts sales:
- Cost Efficiency: Enable fast, cost-effective catalog updates, minimizing printing and distribution expenses while ensuring real-time accuracy and efficiency.
- Reliable Channel: Ensure timely delivery and expert support through a robust secondary sales network, strengthening your brand reputation and reliability within the industry.
- Enhanced Productivity: Easily browse catalogs, check availability, and place orders seamlessly from any mobile device for a hassle-free purchasing experience.
- Hassle-Free Maintenance: Reduce maintenance costs with digital catalogs, eliminating storage limitations and preventing degradation common with paper versions, ensuring long-term efficiency and accessibility.
- Aftermarket Sales Boost: Ensure spare parts availability, optimize sales forecasting, and streamline order management to enhance aftermarket sales efficiency and customer satisfaction.
- Error-Free Process: Minimize errors in part number management with visual searches, confirmation processes, and QR code scanning, ensuring accuracy and efficiency.
- Simplify Sales and Service Activities: Enhance sales and service operations with efficient order tracking and inventory management, ensuring seamless workflow and improved customer satisfaction.
- Increased Sales of Genuine Parts: A transparent and efficient spare parts ordering process for distributors and retailers enables OEMs to boost genuine parts sales, ensuring reliability and customer trust.
Conclusion
With the outdated approaches, OEMs often find themselves battling to maintain coordination with secondary sales networks. Manual processes, inconsistent pricing, and limited visibility into real-time inventory lead to dead stock and missed sales opportunities.
Intelli Commerce addresses these challenges earlier with an AI-powered hands-on application to optimize every aspect of the secondary sales channels. From planning sales executives' routes to automated order suggestions to streamlined distributor and retailer collaboration, Intelli Commerce gives OEMs a strong back.
Additionally, with its real-time data analytics feature, OEMs can now make informed decisions, improve customer satisfaction, and achieve 5X growth in spare parts sales.
Don’t let outdated processes hold your business back in the competition. If you’re ready to boost your spare parts sales with Intelli Commerce, book your free demo. Our team will schedule the demo soon.
