Done right, and with careful planning, a fully integrated Direct Store Delivery (DSD) route accounting solution can be the silver bullet your business needs to thrive. In-store success means more than winning shelf space – it’s about earning your customers’ trust and loyalty, and maximizing your presence locally, regionally, nationally or beyond. That’s how you can start to set yourself apart from the competition in a highly competitive, often-saturated market.
Transforming your business into a full on DSD operation with a view to drive sustainable growth isn’t something you decide to do overnight. It requires careful planning and a clear roadmap detailing every step of the sales and delivery journey – how your operation will work in-store is perhaps the most crucial consideration of all.
Achieving in-store success is no easy task
For the sake of clarity, we’ll use an example here. If you’ve got a driver who needs to see 10 customers a day, working 9 hours a day. Say 1 hour is spent loading and unloading the truck; another ½ hour is spent planning routes and whatnot, 2 hours or so to drive around, and another ½ hour for lunch. That leaves around 5 hours of customer time, amounting to half an hour per customer. At each stop, your driver will need to more or less cover the following tasks:
- Tally up shelf inventory
- Generate route sales / direct off-the-truck sales
- Fulfill delivery orders
- Carry out credit card transactions or any other forms of payment from COD customers
- Generate next-day or next-visit pre-sale orders
- Check pricing, merchandising, promotional displays, and stock rotation
- Check customer performance against business goals, KPIs, and competitors
- Carry out any necessary customer surveys
- Deliver, collect, or service company assets such as shelves, racks, signs, display cases, etc.
How a modern, fully integrated DSD solution can help grow your business
The capabilities offered by a comprehensive DSD solution allows your reps to do their job more effectively and efficiently than ever before. Your success as a distribution business depends on the organization and discipline of the reps visiting your customers, so investing in them is an absolute must to ensure long-term success. To do that, you need to provide them with the tools they need to do their job as quickly and accurately as possible.
Orbis DSD Route Accounting & Planning extends Acumatica Cloud ERP with functionality that is tailored for the DSD industry, helping DSD companies increase customer service while reducing errors, payment disputes, and administrative costs. Orbis DSD also integrates with many leading mobile Sales Force Automation applications to provide a full end-to-end DSD solution. Contact us for a customized product demo on simulated data and see the solution in action relative to your business requirements.
