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Perfect Distribution

Software Features

Case Study: Issuing Quotations

Perfect Distribution connects to all of your business databases and your vendors' databases... simultaneously.   This unleashes the true power of our software and instantly transforms your business.

To fully appreciate the power of interconnectivity, let's take a look at how you currently issue quotations... and then compare that to how you would issue quotations with Perfect Distribution.

Issuing Quotations - The Inefficient Way

Let's assume that one of your inside staffers receives a quote request for 50 line items (e.g. a vision system, a 24 VDC power supply, an enclosure, etc.) from 10 different manufacturers (e.g. Cognex, Phoenix Contact, Rittal, etc.)

In order to issue this quote, your salesperson needs to look up the current prices and lead times for all 50 parts. In order to look up the prices, the salesperson has a few options.

In the best case scenario, above, the salesperson could get up-to-date prices on all 50 parts by simply typing them into his quoting program (option #1). In the worst case, he has to sift through 10 individual pricelists… or visit 10 manufacturer websites… or call 10 different customer sales representatives (options #2 - #4).

Once he has all of the prices, he needs to get accurate lead times. In this industrial distribution industry, lead times can vary from “one day” to “8 weeks” for certain products. Customers always want to know when parts can be delivered because a single late part can hold up a multi-million dollar project.

Regardless of how efficiently the salesperson obtained the prices, above, the process of obtaining accurate lead-times is much less efficient. You can’t get up-to-date lead times from an Excel document or PDF. You have to either call the manufacturers or login to their websites to get that information.

So, in order to get lead times in this scenario, the salesperson has to either login to 10 different websites or call 10 different manufacturers.

After all of this work, the salesperson finally has up-to-date prices and up-to-date lead times. Before he can issue the quote, however, the salesperson needs to check whether or not the customer has bought any of the 50 parts before and, if so, what the customer paid for those parts in the past. In order to do this, the salesperson needs to open up your accounting program and search through the customer’s order history for each of the 50 parts.

Once he has verified that all of the quoted prices are consistent with previously-ordered prices, the salesperson can now save the quote... attach the quote to an e-mail... and send it to the custoemr.

As you can see, this entire process is extremely time consuming and inefficient… but hundreds of distributors and thousands of salespeople do it everyday. It consumes their time and it consumes the time of the manufacturer’s customer service staff who have to field questions about price and lead times all day long.

The worst part is... after all of that work, the outside sales staff and management team are often clueless that a quote has even been issued!   Unless the inside staff member decides to e-mail the quote to the outside sales engineers and management team, no one will know to follow up with the customer... attempt to expand the sale... and/or book the order!

Issuing Quotations - The Perfect Distribution Way

When you issue a quote using our revolutionary web-based Quote Generator, you start by typing in the name of the customer who requested the quote.   As you're typing, our quoting program instantly connects to your CRM database and imports the appropriate contact information for the selected customer.

As you begin entering part numbers, our quoting program instantly connects to your vendor web portals... logs in to your account... and then extracts the real-time price and availability data for each part number.   We also connect to your accounting database and check to see if this customer has ordered any of the parts in the past. If so, our quoting program instantly displays the recently ordered prices to the salesperson. This ensures that the salesperson uses consistent, high-margin pricing.

What does all this mean?   Your staff can now issue accurate quotes (with lead times!) in a matter of seconds.   They no longer have to call each vendor individually... or keep track of Excel / PDF files... or store 30+ login names and passwords... or manually sift through your accounting database to compare quoted prices against previously ordered prices.   Quotes can be created in seconds, and it is virtually impossible to quote inaccurate or out-dated prices!

A salesperson using the Perfect Distribution Quote Generator could issue an accurate quote for 50 parts, as described above, in about five minutes or less. Without the Quote Generator, it would take several hours to complete.

As soon as the quote finished, it's instantly visible to your entire company on your PD website.   Management can now monitor the quoting activity of the entire company!   Sales engineers can instantly see which customers are being quoted by the inside staffers!   The possibilities are endless... and the increased efficiency is priceless!

Finally, at the end of each day, Perfect Distribution will automatically e-mail a quote summary to each of your staff members... smacking them across the face and saying, "Hey, follow up on this!"

Summary

The power of Perfect Distribution lies in the fact that:

1. It is web based.

2. It can simultaneously connect to all of your business databases and the databases of your business partners.

The quoting scenario, above, is just one example of how our software can dramatically (and instantly) transform the transparency, efficiency, and profitability of your distribution business.

There are hundreds of other examples... just take to tour to learn more...