Infor Distribution SX.e Product Roadmap for the Electrical Distribution Industry How Infor Supports the Electrical Distribution Industry
INTRODUCTION We know electrical distribution and we understand your business. Infor Distribution solutions are backed by years of experience helping electrical distributors solve their toughest business challenges. Infor leveraged that depth of knowledge and experience to build proven, innovative solutions ideal for the electrical distribution market. Infor Distribution SX.e continues our tradition of innovation, delivering the technology and tools you need to increase productivity, improve profitability and support growth today as well as tomorrow. KEY REQUIREMENTS FOR ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTORS AND HOW WE SUPPORT THEM Business Intelligence Information is king. Sales, financial and inventory information must be connected, accessible and understandable. Electrical distributors need information to negotiate better deals with vendors, identify ways to improve efficiency, enhance productivity and better manage their inventory. Infor solutions like Workspace, Pulse, ION Connect, Event Management and Workflow provide the visibility you need to make better, more informed decisions and improve performance. Web Presence Electrical distributors need a web storefront to strengthen ties to existing customers and reach new customers selling to this generation, as well as the next. Our solutions leverage the latest technologies to optimize your online product catalogs and enable your customers to purchase when and how they like to buy. Infor Storefront provides your customers the ability to enter their own orders and also enjoy self-service capabilities, such as checking the status of their orders and review their invoices at their own convenience. Sales Tools Selling is critical to your success, and your sales team is your most important asset. Providing you with the tools you need to excel at your job, like CRM and Dashboards, will help you sell more effectively, better understand your customers and products, and manage activity for your accounts. Counter Sales For electrical distributors who are contractor-based, counter sales are a major component of their business. Counter screens must facilitate very quick entry. Distribution SX.e provides an alternative screen design and workflows for the counter to receive on-account functionality, credit card processing, cash drawer balancing, and forced password entry per order for counter clerks who share terminals. Counter sales and warehouse management have been streamlined to support the buyer who brings an item to the counter but then changes his mind and wants a different product. The system will replenish the showroom area when needed. Rebates As a key component to profitability, electrical distributors need vendor rebates based on both purchasing and sales. Vendor-based on sales rebates (ship and debits or SPA s) are critical for the distributor s vendor to participate in supporting specific pricing for a particular customer or job. Distribution SX.e has full rebate capabilities to assist in the setup, processing and reconciliation of rebates, with advanced capabilities including EDI support for setup and reconciliation, processing of rebates on demand or scheduled, and chained rebates 2
Pricing Providing the right price is critical for electrical distributors. Advanced Enterprise capabilities including Multiple Price/Rebate Types and Velocity Pricing Modifier provide electrical distributors the tools needed for a flexible pricing strategy. Distribution SX.e s integration to epacube s Gross Profit Optimization solution provides customer "cost to serve" calculations, customer product price sensitivity, and other product segmentation information to suggest the right product price by customer to increase gross margin. Large Amount of Product Data Electrical distributors sell a very large number of individual products and must be able to efficiently and consistently order non-stocks from their vendors. Many electrical distributors get their data from trade service, which aggregates product and pricing information from electrical suppliers into a common format and provides it for a fee to distributors. Managing new products, product updates and price changes is complex and time-consuming. The integrated solution to epacube s Product Data Management Suite provides the necessary data cleansing, synchronizing and data mapping capabilities our customers need to manage this large volume of data. This solution will cleanse, merge, match, and cross-reference items from multiple systems, ensuring your product information is accurate and up-to-date. When data is imported from trade service, once cleansed, it is added to both Distribution SX.e and the Storefront database to allow for consistent and accurate selling of these products to customers and sourcing the products from vendors. Efficient Buying Keeping inventory costs down is critical. The Buyer s Control Center from Distribution SX.e provides your buyers one central location from which to make decisions about what to buy. Once in the Buyer s Control Center, everything you need to know to make an intelligent purchasing decision is right at your fingertips. Increasing Margins Electrical distributors operate at a very low margin. With Distribution SX.e warnings are issued during order entry if a margin is outside tolerances established for that type of product. This can also trigger an alert to a branch manager or sales manager. An order outside tolerances can also put it on margin hold. After shipping and before invoicing the user has the ability to review the sales order s margin and amend the selling prices if needed. Looking for ways to reduce costs is a top priority for every electrical distributor. epacube offers a Gross Profit Optimization suite that can help you cut costs, optimize pricing and capture lost margins with superior data visibility and modeling. Whether you re creating what if scenarios to understand the impact of price changes or modeling the future impact of cost changes on your gross margin and pricing, you gain better analysis to guide your choices before enacting changes in your Infor Distribution solution. Kitting Competitive pressures have forced electrical distributors to explore new methods of staying profitable. Finding fresh ways to package and market a product is one way to stay ahead. Trying to handle kits sales and production without a system designed for the task can be a challenge. The Kit Production module from Distribution SX.e supports pre-built, build-on-demand and build-on-the-fly kit processing 3
Job Management Electrical distributors need tools to manage their customers long-term jobs. The Job Management solution simplifies contract jobs by automating the bidding, awarding, billing maintenance, and tracking procedures. Wire Managing large spools of wire is a challenge for electrical distributors. Distribution SX.e provides visibility in Order Entry to lot-controlled spools to ensure the length requested is available. Total Warehouse Logistics (TWL) supports lot controlled inventory, including the ability to store multiple lots in a single location, providing the distributor more flexibility in managing spools of wire Storeroom Toolcrib and Consignment More and more electrical distributors are managing inventory at their customers locations. Distribution SX.e fully supports these capabilities through solutions like Advanced Order and Inventory Management and through our new Storeroom solution. EDI Electrical distributors are tightly integrated to their customers and suppliers through EDI. Distribution SX.e provides full EDI capabilities. The recent addition of the Electronic Transaction Control Center enables the distributor to manage large volumes of electronic transactions (such as EDI and XML) with greater efficiency and speed. ENHANCEMENTS PLANNED TO FURTHER SUPPORT THE ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY New User Interface Infor is delivering a new user interface that provides intuitive functionality and easy-to-use tools to dramatically improve the overall user experience. Business Intelligence Infor is developing electrical Industry dashboards and expanding on the existing vendor scorecard to help ensure you can better negotiate next year s contracts. Web Presence Understanding that having a web presence is no longer enough, improvements in this area will focus on selling to the next generation and expanding Self-service offerings, including support of chat sessions. Sales The use of Infor CRM Business will bring additional value with the enhanced integration. The integration will support a two-way integration for master files, with security to ensure control of what data can be updated by the CRM user. The integration will also support the ability to generate and track quotes. The sales team will be further enabled through a new Employee Portal, providing necessary product, sales and customer information. Punch out to Storefront Catalog from within Distribution SX.e order entry will give the inside sales person the same search and order benefits as Storefront. New Product Restriction functionality will ensure the sales team is selling products in compliance with vendor contracts. Phone system integration will enable your sales team to be more efficient and provide a more personal experience for your customers. 4
Rebates Improvements planned in this area include providing workflow capabilities to streamline the reconciliation process in order to provide additional efficiencies in this typically labor intensive process. Large Amounts of Product Data Enhancements planned in this area include improved integration to Storefront to ensure large amounts of clean, common data are available to both Distribution SX.e and Storefront. Increasing Margins On-going enhancements in the areas of Credit Card processing, Freight Cost Recovery and Inbound Freight Analysis are just a few examples of enhancements planned that focus on reducing costs and increasing margins. Commodities Enhancements are planned in the area of Bid Prep to better meet the needs of electrical distributors. Kitting Integration to Infor Storefront is planned to enable and streamline the kit order process. Job Management Improvements are planned in the area of job management, enable management of large projects, phased release of inventory, incremental billing, accrued rebates, managing labor, support of lot items, and other key activities. Logistics Support for additional centralized and regional distribution sales center processing scenarios. EDI Improvements in this area include support of specific supplier requirements, including companies like Rockwell and Phillips. Enhancements are also planned to enable the user to configure the data being sent. International Expansion Electrical distributors are not only buying and selling globally, they are also opening up companies globally. Enhancements in this area will include expanded support of international tax and currency requirements, as well as localization and language translations for certain regions. 5
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