Distribution Management

With our integration to S2K Manufacturing, users can review the component stock status of finished goods, check on open production and relay Available to Promise (ATP) dates to the customer, and they can use the built in configurator to choose features and options to build the Bill of Material (BOM) on-the-fly.

From one comprehensive application, users can process orders, quotes, returns, standing orders, and future orders. S2K Order Entry is also integrated with S2K CRM / Sales Force. From order entry sales reps can create follow up tasks on any transaction, access CRM notes, link quotes to opportunities, and track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. With S2K Order Entry you will not only improve your customer service, but you will exceed your customers’ expectations.

Contact Management

S2K CRM facilitates complete order processing and customer / prospect tracking. One comprehensive sales team?dashboard allows you to:

• Generate quotes, enter orders, and track specific opportunities
• Review current order status
• Check item pricing and availability
• View customer account information and history
• Create to-do lists to flag follow-up activity

S2K CRM software gives you unlimited user defined fields, at the customer, contact, and opportunity level to provide you with a flexible database for searching and analysis plus detailed notes to help track all communications within each account. S2K CRM software gives everyone in your organization access to the same, up-to-date information, allowing them to react quickly to customer demands and provide the highest level of customer service.

Marketing Automation

Take advantage of your contact database with automated marketing campaigns that allow you to email, fax or mail sales or promotional related material directly from the sales team dashboard. S2K CRM software contains advanced sorting criteria options that enable you to select a specific target audience for your campaign. By using the group e-mail feature, you can send promotional sales information, item coupons, new product information, updated price lists and collateral instantly to selected contacts. Export options allow you to import lists into online marketing tools for advanced campaign tracking and analysis. All campaign broadcast information will be noted in the contact management notes file for easy review and follow up. This powerful tool allows you to increase the relevance and timing of your marketing messages, develop long-lasting customer relationships, and provide a valuable ‘dialog’ for additional customer contact.

Sales Force Automation

S2K CRM data is the foundation for our S2K Sales Force application. Today, immediate access to CRM and enterprise data is essential to your sales team in order to be productive. S2K Sales Force is a comprehensive online sales tool optimized for the supply chain professional. It provides browser-based access to CRM and Enterprise data to allow your sales team to leverage mobile devices and make the most of every sales call, whether they are in the office or out in the field.

Turn Data into Forecasts

Sales forecasting is a crucial part of the financial planning of a business. It’s a self-assessment tool that uses past sales data to intelligently predict future performance. S2K Sales Forecasting is designed to help you assess the likely demand levels so that you can properly manage your inventory and have adequate resources in place. S2K Forecasting uses advanced algorithms such as expediential smoothing, linear regression, holt-winters, and others that measure data points in a series. These data points populate graphs so that you have a visual representation of the data. For each method, the system will then generate a forecast for each product. Each method is analyzed and the system will automatically recommend the best forecasting algorithm with the highest accuracy. Users can then review the system generated forecast and manually adjust future predictions based on outside forces and sales opportunities. The final adjusted forecast for each item is utilized in S2K Manufacturing for MRP, and S2K Purchasing for enhanced suggested purchasing. S2K performance monitoring tools provide instant analysis on the effectiveness of forecasts against actual?sales.

The goal with any automated buying solution is to generate purchase order quantities that support the company’s strategic goals for profits and customer service, while doing so in the most efficient and economic fashion. S2K’s Suggested Purchasing application can optimally push order quantities up to get prepaid freight, or to hit vendor minimums, or to cube out a full container, if desired – all while honoring pack sizes. Additionally, it can consider multiple warehouses in the distribution network and check for overstocked items and facilitate stock transfers before buyers place orders to the vendor. By calculating the costs and upcoming demand for each of your items, S2K Suggested Purchasing can tell you if a vendor incentive makes economic sense, and if so, how much more of each item to buy.

Proper Forecasting

By leveraging historical sales data, systems can forecast demand and predict long-range trends, as well as seasonality for each item. VAI’s forecasting system captures seasonality and trends, and calculates how volatile the sales are for each item. No matter how good the forecasting system is, there are always going to be items with volatile and unpredictable swings in sales beyond seasonality and trends. By incorporating sales volatility per item into the safety stock calculations, companies will be covered for sales spikes that occur above the forecasted demand.

S2K Suggested Purchasing evaluates all demand and supply requirements to create time-phased replenishment plans for each product at each location.

Evaluations done by forecasting include:

• Lead-time length and variability
• Desired customer service-level requirements
• Order cycle economics
• Item level safety-stock and targets
• Order generation rules and preferences

Take the guesswork out of purchasing

The typical distributor stocks thousands of items at each warehouse. Buyers and planners do not have time to manage each item individually; they need to focus on selected items that require action. S2K’s Suggested Purchasing application performs the complex calculations for each item at each location, and then flags those items with specific conditions hat are beyond user defined tolerances. Most importantly, the company’s capabilities to handle important clients are greatly improved because the investment in inventory versus customer service tradeoff is now visible and?controllable.

Import Efficiency

Many distributors have made the strategic decision to gain cost efficiencies by importing products from other parts of the globe. Although this can certainly lower unit costs, it creates complexities in other areas such as significantly increased and variable lead times. This poses a new challenge to buyers and planners, who must now place orders for products that will not arrive for months. Automated purchasing systems can factor in the lead time for each item, at each location, in its calculations of optimized order quantities. They also factor in the variability of the vendor lead time into its safety stock calculations to provide insurance against late deliveries.