Over the last few years, there has been increasing buzz around the digitization of supplier-customer relationships in the process manufacturing and chemical distribution industries. We wouldn't say that this trend comes as a total surprise to anyone – when you think about your personal life as a consumer, how do you prefer to interact with brands?
The Problem: "We accept credit cards today but we do it through an online portal or with a physical card reader."
Most process manufacturers and chemical distributors accept credit cards for some portion of their sales. Customers with poor or declining credit, slow payers, or small customers account for many of those charges. When these cases come up you find yourself jumping between your ERP system and an online processing portal or a physical card reader. You might not have a great way to save card numbers and associate them with the right customer profile in your ERP so you end up writing down or saving sensitive credit card information in non-secure locations. You then have the headache of having to reconcile payments between your bank, your merchant processing statements and your ERP. It can be a messy process and is ripe for errors and security issues.
Have you ever heard of the term “ERP” before? Not exactly sure what it is or why it is important to process manufactures and chemical distributors? Have you tried researching it and found it overwhelming and a little confusing? You are not alone. As a leading developer and provider of ERP software solutions, we are often asked to explain ERP and its benefits.
Technology plays an enormous role for many process manufacturers and other organizations wanting to grow their business. A vast majority already have CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software solutions implemented in their business today. CRM solutions help companies manage the front-end of the business by handling sales, marketing and customer service information. While ERP solutions help the back-end processes and internal information like accounting, inventory, shipping, etc. Although both solutions are unique and do very different things, there is a critical crossover of information between the two solutions. Here are 3 major benefits to integrating your CRM and ERP solutions together:
It's the beginning of spring, which means it is a great time to evaluate and improve upon some of your business processes. Your company's inventory is something that should always be tracked closely, and the tools and techniques you use to track it should be efficient and relatively easy to manage.
