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No More Floral Manual Processes, Automate Them!
Originally published Wednesday, Oct 11, 2017
Taking notes of the orders your customers make by phone, submitting the request to the procurement team via email, Skype or Google Sheets so then they can communicate that to the vendor, seems to be a process that requires being careful about remembering all details along every step of the way.
In the floral industry, manual processes mean taking care of aspects that can greatly distract your team from what really matters: selling! Here are some things that can help automate your sales management, enhance departmental communication and increase your inventory control through Komet Sales:
From Sales to Procurement
It’s important for the sales and procurement teams to be synchronized because if the salesperson needs to sell a product the company doesn’t have, the procurement team will have to buy it (well, the obvious reason). When a salesperson creates a Prebook in the system with the items the customer ordered, procurement can see this information automatically and start working on supplying it. They can also communicate particular specifications through notes or tags regarding certain requirements to facilitate team work and ensure getting the right flowers for the clients.
But, what happens if your sales team has orders in Excel files? They just have to fill in the required information and upload the template to generate a Prebook! And that’s not it, if salespeople have several customers who request the same long order at different intervals of times, they can create templates in which input the information about varieties and quantities and save it, so then when a similar request is received, they will just have to load the template and complete the data related to the client (name, truck date, carrier and so on).
Now, maybe you are thinking that you sell recurrent orders to different clients and there’s nothing you can do to automate this process. Standing Orders makes it possible! Your sales team can create them in the system or double these orders for holiday requirements.
From Procurement to the Vendor
As we discussed before, sales creates the Prebook with the customers’ needs so procurement can see it and contact the vendor. The process from here is simple too! Procurement creates a Purchase Order for the vendor who will be access the order through an email or the Vendor Portal once it is approved.
If there’s a Prebook created from Vendor Availability, the system will automatically place those items into an pre-existing Purchase Order (as long as the date and vendor are an equal match) or a new one, avoiding to generate a lot of unnecessarily PO’s and automating the procurement process.
Inventory Management
Administering the company’s inventory (future, projections and on-hand) allows you to keep track of the flowers you have on sale, the age of the products, the incoming ones, make adjustments and transfer them to your locations.
Having the knowledge about inventory makes easy selling products for the sales team and in the system, through the Add Items screen, they can know just about everything regarding the products. The procurement team, can fill from Open Market a product needed, guaranteeing the correct inventory rotation or if there’s an unable to source product item, they can mark it so the sales team contacts the clients.
These are just a few examples of what your teams can do, there are plenty of options to automate sales and procurement processes within the system. Integrate every party of the business and be informed in real time about the status of your daily operations.
