Industrial Supply Distribution Software

Industrial supplies distributors and manufacturers can reap big benefits from IBS' integrated business software solution, including these major functional areas:

• Distribution and logistics
• Financials and Business Intelligence
• Purchasing and procurement
• Sales order and customer service management
• Warehouse and Inventory Management

This section highlights some of the many advantages that your industrial supplies distribution business can gain from IBS software.

Efficient distribution and logistics

• AUTOMATED SHIPPING OPTIMIZATION

  including automatic disposal check of stock, capacity, components and transportation. Other automated shipping capabilities include picking and dispatching based on shipment plans, delivery advice and route plan creation and notification at order entry, alternative delivery address for freight documents, complete shipping documentation and loading area instructions

• BACK TO BACK DELIVERY

  The IBS solution gives you the ability to coordinate direct deliveries from suppliers to customers, helping to eliminate costs associated with receiving and picking sold goods

• MSDS AND OTHER NON-CONFORMING STOCK TRANSPORT DOCUMENTS

  Products such as paints, grease and lubricants – as well as dangerous or hazardous goods – often require specialized storage handling and reporting. Material safety data sheets (MSDS) and TrEm cards, etc., as well as labels, are all handled by the system, as well as delivery notes, loading lists, bills of lading and manifests associated with these goods. Multi-lingual and EU specification ready

• SERIAL NUMBER TRACKING

  Total, automated tracking power lets you track individual items through serial number from stock receipt through to customer invoicing. Lot and batch tracking is also supported

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Warehousing and inventory power

The IBS solution helps you ensure efficient and optimized warehousing operations and inventory levels through comprehensive information management. This level of detail and accuracy is especially critical for the large range of inventories required for industrial supply distribution.

IBS' automated warehousing solution handles all phases of industrial supply distribution, from reception all the way through put-away and picking. Specific solutions for some industrial supply distribution include:

• AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATION AND WARNING

  ALERT MANAGEMENT gives constant monitoring of warehouse operations and alerts you to actual or potential problems. You can set up parameters, such as minimum stock quantity, that trigger notification to authorized staff. The system can also be set up to provide messages that include actions for solving problems that arise

• BAR CODE AND RADIO FREQUENCY (RF) SUPPORT

  Fully integrated support for bar coding and RF handling allow quick tracking and communication of serial and lot numbers or batch codes, helping to provide labelling accuracy through the reduction of human error and paperwork

• COMPONENT IDENTIFICATION

  One item such as a ball bearing might have a manufacturer's, customer's and supplier's part number, at different prices. When a customer needs a part, you can enter part specifications, look at the options and make the best choice based on the customer's needs

• INVENTORY SEGMENTATION

  You can classify all stock items based on volume value classification, helping to plan products more effectively. This feature can help identify products that are, for example, highturnover, low-margin, high-value (such as pumps and generators) and slow-moving, resulting in more efficiently managed inventory and beneficial effects on such KPIs as inventory days supply and cash-to-cash cycle time

• SKU MANAGEMENT

  Dealing with tens of thousands of stock-keeping unit (SKU) numbers, often with catalog support for non-stocked items, is a huge task in industrial supply distribution. The IBS solution helps you manage the number of SKUs you need to stock, helping to reduce overhead costs

• STOCK OPTIMIZATION

  Inventory Control provides you with tools for dynamic demand forecasting for different item segments, automated replenishment suggestions, inventory analysis and simulations. All of these functions help to ensure that the right components are available in stock, keeping lead-times on target and inventory at economical levels.

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Procurement and purchasing savings

Pricing is not the only factor that determines effective procurement. As businesses seek further ways to cut costs, procurement moves into the foreground, blending e-sourcing, monitoring, KPI metrics and analysis into the bigger picture of business efficiency.

The IBS solution is built to allow procurement on a wide-ranging basis, including strategic sourcing, to help your business secure stock at the best price. Coupled with automated warehousing and inventory routines that maintain optimal stock levels, IBS' procurement measures help your business to minimize total supply chain costs through lower payrolls, lower operating costs and the most efficient purchasing methods. The effects of a Total Cost of Procurement approach can help to increase sales, obtain and maintain high customer satisfaction and give added value to employee productivity.

The IBS solution gives you access to advanced methods, such as automated sourcing strategies, that drive down costs through better procurement processes and reductions in overhead costs.

• ADVANCED RFQ CAPABILITIES

  Requests for quotations can be generated automatically and sent to suppliers through EDI, XML, Web-service communications, fax or email. This quick creation and transmission can result in lower administrative costs, better prices and the ability to negotiate more favorable terms and conditions

• AUTOMATED PURCHASE ORDER CREATION

  Purchase orders can be created automatically, based on system suggestions when user-defined criteria are satisfied. The system can also check order points instead of performing this manually. The automated routine helps to reduce labor costs and errors

• AUTOMATED PURCHASE SIMULATION AND SUGGESTION REVIEW

  Simulations let you anticipate real procurement costs through current system information. Purchase suggestion reviews take into account inventory levels, helping you maintain safety stock and pinpoint items to purchase

• DISTRIBUTION ANALYSIS

  Based on current information from throughout the system, this analysis capability helps you to determine real procurement costs. It also gives you the capability for direct automatic replenishment based on the analysis results

• LANDED COST

  The IBS solution automates the calculation of landed cost, which can be spread over several purchase order lines in a reception. This helps to lower overhead through the reduction of administrative costs and manual errors

• PULL, PRIORITY AND SHORTAGE EVALUATION

  This automated analysis provides automatic monitoring of urgent stocks, plus the capability for automatic order generation

• PURCHASE SUGGESTION MANAGEMENT

  The IBS solution provides suggestion management capabilities with automatic review codes for product lines, helping to ensure accuracy, maximum line value, stock levels and optimized values. Additional functions include special buy evaluation, interactive line buying and graphical planning tools that give a complete overview of procurement information

• SUPPLIER AGREEMENT AND PRICE NEGOTIATION

  Supplier Marketing Support gives you an automated method to take advantage of supplier discount programs. The software handles complex supplier rebate rules and can be an invaluable tool for negotiating the best supplier agreements and prices

In addition, the IBS solution includes other automated solutions for strategic sourcing, including powerful reporting that helps you follow up rejected deliveries, back-orders, discounts, prices and service levels; supplier agreement management through DISTRIBUTION, which lets you analyze agreement factors and create the best agreements for lower purchase costs; and supplier lead-time and service level analysis with Inventory Control.

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Enhanced sales order and service management

IBS' solution addresses specific sales order and service management needs for industrial supply distributors, such as:

• ADVANCED TOOLS FOR SERVICE ORDER MANAGEMENT

  IBS' solution offers a full range of capabilities for top service order management, including: mobile service order dispatching to engineers, Planner View graphical planning tool highlighting service orders and engineers capacity constraints, Effective Time reporting and automatic generation of internal and external invoices

• CUSTOMER DELIVERY SCHEDULING

  Automated forecasting, based on safety stock levels and other information from customers, lets you predict what stocks customers will require in forthcoming periods. Your business can benefit through more efficient inventory control as well as greater customer satisfaction

• CUSTOMER SELF-SERVICE

  Web-enabled customers can use NetStore capabilities to place orders and track product, reducing your operation's administrative and staff costs while providing 24/7 one-stop- shop service to your customers

• PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE

  SERVICE lets you schedule automatic preventative maintenance to keep inventory in top condition. You can save on inventory days supply and cash-to-cash cycle time, as well as maintain efficient stock levels, by preventing or reducing losses due to stoppage or breakdown. In addition, you can plan maintenance in accordance with work center resources and schedules

• PRODUCT CONFIGURATION

  The PRODUCT CONFIGURATOR helps to ensure component accuracy and integrity for creating made-to-order BOMs that fit customer specifications. This can lead directly to better customer satisfaction and product quality and reduce the need for technically-trained staff to complete complex order structures

• RESTRICTED SALES

  The solution has seamless handling of restricted sales, when certain items may not be sold to specific regions, firms or locations because of standards or legal reasons. Status numbers are assigned to each order, which lets you track and monitor held orders and take action to fulfil legal obligations

• SOURCING FOR RUSH ORDERS AND SPECIAL ORDERS

  The system's automatic product sourcing capability is ready-made for rush orders, back-to-back orders or alternative and replacement items. Continuous status monitoring helps identify orders that need stock allocation priority. MULTI DISTRIBUTION CENTER enhances the ability to find and allocate stock in a multi-site environment. Enhanced product visibility can help to produce shorter order fulfilment lead-times and reduce safety stock

• TAX HANDLING AND CONTROL

  The IBS solution uses country-specific VAT rules to provide automatic calculation and accounting of ingoing and outgoing VAT for international business. The system also gathers information for full Intrastat reporting and Tax declarations. This helps reduce overhead costs related to VAT obligations in the form of administrative costs. The system also handles North American taxation and other GST (general sales tax) orders

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Financials and Business Intelligence advantages

In addition to standard financial transactions – such as a comprehensive General Ledger, reconciliation and banking functions – the IBS financials solution handles specific problems that can make the difference in profitability for industrial supplies distributors, including:

• ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

  FINANCIALS helps you reduce bad debt and improve accounts receivable and payment statistics. You can monitor and administer customer account balances through automatic statements of account, reminders for overdue invoices and collection handling. This help to reduce A/R days outstanding and your cash-to-cash cycle time

• ACTIVITY-BASED COST REPORTING

  This gives you the opportunity to measure and improve the efficiency of CRM and SCM processes. The IBS solution calculates net profitability from an Activity Based Costing (ABC) approach. The equations used can include any type of balance, whether these are pre-defined in the system, quickly and easily defined by users, calculated or redistributed

• ASSET MANAGEMENT

  IBS helps you obtain maximum value from assets – including physical property, warranties and service contracts – through ASSET MANAGEMENT

• AUTOMATIC TRANSACTION CREATION AND TRANSFER

  Each event in the operational system has user-defined accounting rules for automatic transfer to the General Ledger and sub-ledgers

• CROSS-COMPANY REPORTING

  lets you choose a range of your system companies to include in financial or other reports. Assets analysis, profit and loss per division, and figures vital to a multi-company environment can be reported for any period

• INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY AND LANGUAGE CAPABILITY

  The system handles any currency and provides support for currency optimization, helping to protect you from losses associated with currency exchange rates. Far-ranging language support means that you can communicate with customers all over the world in their language with, for example, multilingual transaction documentation

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Business Intelligence

IBS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE is tailor-made by supply chain software specialists for supply chain management analysis. It can be used by all levels of employees and produces reports in a wide variety of formats. It comes with pre-loaded client applications that are designed for supply management needs. Industry-standard OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools for Datamarts are included.

All transactions that occur in your business system, which carry a cost, quantity, or other properties, are transferred to and sorted within the data warehouse. Balances (for example, gross and net sales, cost of goods sold and any associated sales costs) are automatically created for periods that you define. These balances can be sourced and updated from almost any area within your business system, including general ledgers, sub-ledgers, asset control, sales, purchasing, manufacturing, service and inventory. The balances can be compared against any number of key values, including those such as business partner, item, item group, salesperson, account number and cost center.

You can also leverage data that is collected from external databases, including business partners and other external sources. Trade statistics and benchmark data, forecasts on general market trends and credit information are all at your disposal for analysis.

Finally, with BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, you can measure and analyze KPIs and ROI, based on pre-loaded values or on values that you define. A full range of reporting options, through Report Writer and Quick Report Writer, puts the information at your fingertips.

Contact IBS for more information on Industrial Supply distribution software. »