Decentralised and Centralised order processing

All of us almost living in scary time.

Quarantine tips:

Let’s be positive and fill positive energy around us which ultimately gives immune power to body. And try to spend time with people who uplift and upskill don’t entertain negative speakers and one who brings down. 

Most importantly Stay active at home as like regular working day don’t change the timing, stay hydrated and be fit.

DECENTRALISED TO CENTRALISED ORDER PROCESSING:

Though this topic discussed in multiple forums would like to present by covering most standard operations of industries. Most of the organisation follow centralised Purchase process but this is for sales process.

During quarantine period or even in future to optimize the sales activity effectively this functionality can help to both Make to Order and Make to Stock scenarios. This can be applied over any ERP system.

Concentrated more on execution of this proposed solution but having confidence to compile and bring all challenges inside the Standard operating procedure below.

Decentralised or General Process:

• Customer / Sales representative calls directly to Stock distribution centre of an organisation and salesperson punches the order in system.
• Total sales depend based on the product availability in distribution centre.
• Invoices being done based on Order

Impact of present Process:

• Unable to track exact demand.
• May end up in wrong planning or Leads to produce wrong product based on Sales.

Centralised or Proposed process:

a)   First suggestion is setting up a call centre at corporate level to collect the orders directly, in this process no further investment required for any other application except existing ERP.

• Call Receiver Punch the order in System or capture in Excel.
• Order will be punched directly to ERP system or uploaded through Excel.

b)   If decision is going for any application above your ERP then Sales Representative or a customer can be provided with mobile or web application to punch the order.

• Process is simple extract the content order wise in Excel.
• Create orders through simple upload.

c)   Either of the option distribution centre staffs will get only the packing instruction ie., PACKING SLIP with customer address through mail. He must plan only the dispatches overload of order processing is eliminated from his role itself. Eliminate the risk of error with centralized customer, order and invoice records shared across the business.

Influence of Proposed System:

• Speed and accuracy guaranteed for time critical business
• The additional locations can be stocked to that specific area's demand in order to better serve customers
• Proposed system has two layered process and depends on two different systems or single system based on option selected.
• Direct Order will be available for the distribution centre users
• Exact analytics of data about demand in market
• Planning for production can be improved based on Order Vs Invoice details.
• Ensure greater customer satisfaction and increased sales

Technical Flow / Pitch to make proposed system live: (for Option B)

1)   Selection of Front/Back End technology for the proposed System.

2)   Back End design.

a.   Distribution centre details, Customer Master and Material Master of ERP System will be pulled at regular interval and that will be acting as master data for the order processing application.

b.   Further order processing application’s database will have the required fields of Sales Order creation.

3)   Front end

a.   Planned to bring the same concept as like organisation’s ERP system.

b.   Once the data is punched user commit save, order get saved in application, integrate the process flow to ERP system.

c.   FTP is the better way of connectivity for any ERP, RFC call API push and pull too acceptable depends on application’s capability.

Crucial Areas to be addressed (only for Option B):

1)   Pushing the master records and pricing details.  

Reports:

1)   Order vs invoiced detail report.

2)   Demand in depot based on orders at depot.

Conclusion:

Multiple pros and cons are there in both centralised and decentralised process covered only few of those. By comparing both the process and adding few more checks it can be handled well enough to support any business entities towards successful sales achievement. 

Abinath Sivasankaran