How Intelli Commerce Empowered A Leading OEM’s Distributor-Retailer Network by Enhancing Transparency

‍

Major Challenges Faced by the OEM

‍

Lack of Visibility into Secondary Sales Data

The OEM struggled with a lack of visibility into secondary sales data. Orders placed by retailers through distributors often went unreported to the OEM as distributors often don’t show interest in stocking a slow-moving part with high MOQ. This lack of transparency not only impacted their collective sales, but inadvertently also promoted the sales of non-genuine parts, tarnishing the brand's reputation.

Ever-Evolving Parts Quality & Pricing

OEMs are continuously working to improve product quality while introducing new part numbers every now and then. In the fast-moving global economy, pricing also fluctuates frequently along with the enhanced quality and impact. In a manual system, it becomes very challenging for distributors to keep track of these newly-introduced spare parts and their changing prices.

Constant Delays in Order Processing

Retailers experienced delays in receiving their desired parts due to manual order processing. Sales executives, often in the field, collected orders daily but faced challenges in putting them into the OEM's ERP system the same day. This cycle of getting orders but not listing them the same day resulted in an ever-ending delay which hindered timely order fulfillment and end customer satisfaction.

Lack of Clarity in Order Status Updates

Retailers often expected the sales executives to provide the status of orders collected during the last visit. However, since the sales executives are always on the move, they often lack this information, causing new orders to be delayed. Therefore, this hackneyed process of collecting orders, but not having any clarity about the order status updates become another major challenge for the OEM.

High Costs of Onboarding Sales Executives

Given the necessity of maintaining a vast network of retailers, an equally large team of sales executives is required to visit these retailers at least once in a week. However, bringing new sales professionals onboard and training them for the job involved a huge chunk of cost and time for distributors. Retaining such a workforce in a fast-paced economy is a significant challenge for distributors.

‍

How We Resolved These Challenges

‍

Quick Ordering with Mobile App: We started off by developing user-friendly native Android and iOS apps for a broad network of distributors. The app interface is tailored to simplify spare parts identification and ordering by distributors and retailers.

Advanced Search Options: Our advanced search option included voice, QR code, VIN, and figure search for efficient and quick parts identification. The idea behind this strategy was to make sure that each product is found with profound ease.

Inbuilt Rules for Transparency: Intelli Commerce allows OEMs to explore and control the option to map certain details such as which distributor can sell to which retailer or which sales executive would collect orders from which retailer.

Direct Retailer Ordering: Flexible and intuitive layout of Intelli Commerce platform also enabled retailers to order directly via the mobile application, which can effectively reduce the dependency on distributor field forces.

Quick Parts Ordering: Now users can quickly place orders based on previous purchases by individual retailers or the entire network, all available at the click of a button for fast and efficient ordering, reducing the risk of missing orders.

Distributor Back Office: We have customized a web-based admin panel which is available to the OEM and each distributor, allowing them to efficiently track and process all orders placed by sales executives or retailers in real time.

ERP Integration: Orders placed through the Mobile App or Web App are directly created in the OEM's ERP system (such as SAP). Dispatch details from the ERP are also integrated with our system, providing retailers with a single source of truth for all orders, including open and backorders.

Analytics and Stock Analysis: Utilizing historical order data from distributors and retailers enables accurate stock prediction at various warehouses, minimizing order fulfillment delays and enhancing overall customer satisfaction with utmost transparency.

‍

Results Achieved by the OEM with Our Solutions

‍

The implementation of the solution yielded significant improvements and outcomes:

‍

Increased Sales: Sales of genuine parts increased due to enhanced visibility into part availability and pricing data.

Reduced Costs: Costs were reduced as parts ordering became easier. Fewer sales executives were needed to visit retailers, as retailers could place orders themselves.

Reduced Support Calls: Retailers could easily track the status of their orders, leading to a significant reduction in support calls.

Scalability: The system provided the backbone for the OEM to rapidly scale to new territories, with a reduced learning curve due to the digital system.

Sales Data Prediction: OEMs could predict sales more accurately based on the collected sales data, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
‍

Unlock the full potential of your secondary network (distributors and retailers) & elevate sales of your genuine parts with Intelli Commerce!
‍

Write to us at sales@intellinetsystem.com

‍