How GoSales can help e-commerce startups to improve their supply chain | MaxMobility

    Posted By Max Mobility
    On 05-May-2016
    • Gosales
    • Sales Force Automation

    Scotty Belsky once quoted, “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” But in reality, making the e-commerce ideas work is very challenging, especially if you are a small team of marketers who are just starting out your business. At the beginning, you have to take care of your online presence, superior client experience and efficient supply chain with a tight budget. If any of these fell flat, your business will also suffer the same fate. Supply chain management is probably toughest challenge for any e-commerce businesses startup. You are not alone here, even some of the largest e-commerce marketers are compelled to decline around 40% of overseas orders only for poor supply chain related logistics.

    Supply chain management: The challenges

    After internet revolution, older supply chain management principles are becoming obsolete as consumers are getting more knowledgeable and global competition is sending ripples to every corner of the world. Such circumstances are erecting a new set of challenges before e-commerce businesses.
    • The shift in consumer expectation : The Internet has completely changed the customer expectation and behavior. People can know whereabouts of your business with a finger swipe and more than willing to raise their voice on social media. As far as product is concerned, they have plenty buyers lined up at their services and if you fail short to supply or offer best prices, they will drift away. They also expect that product will be at their doorstep preferably at the next morning. To match with such dynamic and unpredictable consumer behavior, your supply chain should be agile enough to match their preference, efficient enough to deliver without involving any delivery charges and flexible enough to maintain a flawless communication between your suppliers, you and your customer. No doubt, development of such highly sophisticated supply chain requires both time and investment yet you just can’t afford to spend a lot of time as probably in the meantime customers will find other options.
    • Inventory control : This is closely related to the first challenge. Good inventory management can include the availability of safety stock, detailed reports of the transactions and skilled employees who know how to use modern inventory management systems. However, inventory management has its own set of challenges. Firstly, integrating demand planning and inventory planning is a herculean task because after the internet revolution, both client behavior and demand fluctuate very frequently. If you fail to adjust with such varying demand, you may end up stocking much more than required or run out of supply at the time of the high demand. Traditional paper and spreadsheet method of collecting data is becoming ineffective gradually. But if you want to introduce new inventory management system instead, you may face resistance from a section of experienced employees in your team who still prefer old paper and excel sheet method. Convincing and training them for accepting new changes, is a part of your duty as well. Accurate data/report collection is another challenge of inventory control. Demand for a specific product, for example, can vary based on location, time of the year, customer segment and other factors. If you don’t have proper reports and data, obviously your marketing effort will take a hit.
    • Poor Visibility of the field force : Field force is the backbone of any e-commerce business. People may buy online but your field-force requires delivering those purchased items to your customer. If you fail to utilize your field executives properly, soon your clients will raise their voices on social media and your business will go down. Unfortunately, with traditional ways, activities of the executives below two or three level are not clearly visible. You have to depend on your sales team personals for efficient use of the field force. It has two significant disadvantages; firstly, since you can’t watch over your executives, chances of fuel theft and other overhead costs can go up and put pressure on your limited budget. Secondly, available resources may be utilized in a less than optimum way. For example, some executives may found themselves exhausted while others may not be provided with daily task or goal. Communication with suppliers is also very crucial. If they don’t have products in their inventory while you are selling same products online, your reputation may get harmed.

    New solution for your supply chain related problems:

    Truth to be told, several high-quality supply chain management solutions are available in the market. However, most of those are not developed specifically for small businesses and not suited for their limited budget and unique needs. As an e-commerce start-up you probably require a solution which is affordable, easy to install, requires no expensive hardware yet can meet all of your supply chain management needs. GoSales, by Max mobility can prove to be exactly what you needed. It’s a mobile platform based affordable solution, very easy to install and perfectly suitable for your unique challenges. Here is a list of what GoSales can do for you.
    • With Gosales, you can gather reports based on customer demographic location. Your field executive can directly upload reports from the field and you can see those on your admin panel. Later you can use those reports to figure out about your customers’ taste, expectation and brand loyalty. These will help you to segment your customers and develop separate strategies to meet their expectation. Satisfied customers will reward you back by indirectly expanding your business through word-to-mouth marketing.  GoSales also have the inbuilt option to update discounts and compatible with third party ERP systems, so that you can easily provide discounts during festivals without breaking a sweat.
    • Gosales have the built-in option for generating detailed inventory related reports. You can see the current inventory status and stock requirements with just a click.GoSales is very easy to install and requires little training to use.  Just download and install the application in your Smartphone and you are all set. You can easily persuade your employees of traditional views to use this new way of inventory control as this mobility solution doesn’t requires any separate set of technical skill.
    • GoSales provides a crystal-clear image of the entire field force operation. You can directly set the targets for your field force executives and collect the various real-time reports from them. Admin panel also has the options for viewing employee attendance and achievements so that you can assess the performance of each employee. You can also track their movements on the real time basis through GPS technology and easily confront them in the case of any inconsistency.
    In conclusion, with an efficient supply chain, you can always remain one step ahead of the competition. Field force management software like GoSales, are there to light your burden.

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