Dispatches from the Mountaintop - the OSS Blog

Common problems with Wholesale Management Software

Are you making any of these 3 common mistakes with your wholesale business?

- Managing your order fulfillment process with an outdated  system?

- Not selling to the biggest retailers because of no EDI capability?

- Incurring costly chargebacks because of human error?

Your business model IS your business.  

No matter how great your product you can only be as successful as your business model is efficient. 

 

With a Wholesale Management System like Montisvir  at your command, you can rest assured that every aspect of your business - from manufacturing to order management to shipping, warehousing, and EDI translation - is running at maximum efficiency all the time. 

for more information please click here. 

Apparel and Fashion Software/Services

Is your product better than your business model?

It’s not uncommon for wholesale businesses to confuse their product and their business model.  But they are not the same thing and it’s important to understand the differences.

Your product is what you design and/or manufacture.

Your business model is everything you do to bring that product to the marketplace. That includes design and manufacturing, of course,  but also things like:

Shipping, Warehousing, Order Processing, EDI translation and UPC code generation.

We often see companies with strong design and manufacturing capabilities struggle to stay in business. They wonder why they are encountering such difficulties, ultimately chalk it up to the fickleness of fashion, and move on.

In reality, however, a wholesale company’s future rests as much on maximizing efficiencies within all their business processes as it does on riding the latest fashion trends.

With a Wholesale Management System like Montisvir at your command, you can rest assured that your are running your operation in as streamlined and efficient a manner as possible.

In fact, one of our clients saved $500,000 in their first year of using Montisvir just by eliminating the human errors that resulted in chargebacks.

So, as you’re designing and planning your product, don’t forget to put the same degree of thought into your business model.

It could be the difference between success and failure. 

Hey Doll chooses Montisvir Back Office

Lesli Sunshine, President of Lesilu Productions, dba Hey Doll was faced with a challenge during the summer of 2009.  Hey Doll, a privately held company based in New York was founded in 2000 as a wholesaler of costume jewelry and accessories.   Lesli's eye for the market had made the company successful but in order to get to the next level she realized that some changes had to be made.

The company did not have a computer system.  Fulfillment was done at a third party warehouse using their own employees.  

There was no system to keep track of when orders are shipped, or how they were being shipped. They had no knowledge of distribution or logistics. Orders were frequently filled at the eleventh hour, if not past cancel, resulting in costly overnight shipping, customer deductions and charge backs.   Furthermore, the lack of a system caused them to ship an EDI customer from a different facility.  In order to get to the next level Hey Doll had two choices: make a significant capital outlay on a system and staff or outsource their back office operation. 

In July 2009, after much considerations, Hey Doll enlisted the services of One Source Solutions to run their Back Office Operations.   Hey Doll contracted with One Source to provide complete Back Office services including Product Creation, Order Entry, Factory Tracking, EDI Translation, Warehousing and Invoicing, including a Factor interface.

Along with running of the day to day operations of Hey Doll, One Source also provided an analysis and provided recommendations with regard to the freight forwarding charges being incurred by Hey Doll.   

Within the first six months comparable sales were up over 15% and operating costs decreased significantly.    A review of the first 2 customers by One Source resulted in a savings of over $50,000 on shipping within the first 9 months.  An additional savings of over $100,000 was gained by the One Source analysis on freight forwarding.

Hey Doll president Lesli exclaimed, "In the beginning, we were a bit hesitant with the concept of outsourcing our operation to someone else.  For us, the idea of giving up operational control was a scary thought!  However, after our initial meeting with One Source principal, John Ford, it was obvious that One Source had a strong background in operations.  We were looking for a complete solution.  One Source filled that need.   They went out, found additional space so they could do our warehousing and fulfillment and delivered on what they had promised us.  We've become a lot more efficient and are looking forward to continuing this trend as we continue to grow." 

                                                                           

The Back Office Solution - "we leave the product and sales to you"

  After studying and talking with owners of the typical small to medium size wholesale companies, we've found:

The running of a typical business can be divided into 3 main categories:

            

            1.  Product Design and Production
            2.  Sales and Marketing
            3.  Operations 

The owner of the company excels at either #1 or #2  (or perhaps a combination of the two).  Why is this?

Perhaps the entrepreneurial spirit is more attuned to that creative right side of our brains?    

Since the categories are listed by priority, it's understandable that the focus is naturally placed on #1 or #2.    After all, without a good product or sales there's no need to worry about #3.

Whatever the reason, it's common knowledge that a majority of new companies fail within the first 5 years.  Assuming they succeed on the Sales and Product side, that leaves inefficient Operations as a likely cause.  Outsourcing services such as payroll and accounting have been common for some time.  More recently, companies have been looking at outsourcing other areas of their business not related to their core competencies to give them an edge over their competitors.
 

Using our industry proven propietary software, Montisvir, we now offer customers the option of outsourcing their Back Office operation.  

While you maintain control of your business our complete Back Office Solution provides the following benefits:

• Focus on your Core Business. 
• Eliminate huge capital outlays for new hardware, software systems or upgrades.
• Budget your back office operation as a percentage of sales.
• Reduce operating expenses
• Leverage our Operational expertise — Access to operational best practices that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house.

• Grow — We've successfully run our software in an organization whose sales grew from $20 million to over $150 million in under 5 years. Our software is scalable.

One Source Solutions offers a complete list of value added fulfillment and business services.  We invite you to tap into our expertise in back office operations and improve your business.  Our ala carte program will allow you to reap significant cost savings by no longer having to staff all functions of your organization.  Most important, we can help you grow your business!

 If you'd like to learn more and see how we may be able to assist growing your business simply click the link below.

The True Cost of a mistake. SaaS reduces the risk.

I've long been a fan of legendary coach John Wooden.  Admittedly, what originally drew my interest was his incredible record as a basketball coach but as I read his books I began to even more appreciate what he accomplished after retiring from coaching.   At an age when many people slow down in life, he was just getting started.  After retiring from coaching he wrote many books, his last being "A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring with John Wooden." 

Coach Wooden is widely known for his quotes many of which you can see here.  One in particular that I've focused on recently is:

     "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?" - John Wooden

The lesson here is to try and take the time to do things the right way the first time because once you start down a path it's often hard to turn around.   If we think for a minute I'm sure most of us have examples of times where this concept certainly would resonate on a personal level.  However,  historically I think it's also pertinent to decisions made by business owners, specifically in the selection, purchase, and installation of new software.  

  Many of us are all too familiar with, or worse yet, have experienced, a software installation that started with grandiose plans and an optimistic timeline but resulted in delays, over budget issues and adjusting our business to "fit the needs of the software application."   As the process of installing, troubleshooting, modifying, and training continued we reached a fork in the road where we either cut away and dealt with the sunken cost of the failed install or perhaps we reached a point of submission where we just wanted it to be done with, so we could  get back to focusing on our true business.   Of course neither of these is a desired outcome.  However, with the Managed Service Provider (MSP) options available today the risk for a business is greatly reduced.

 

Unlike a tradional software purchase and installation, a Software as a Service (SaaS) installation has three immediate benefits:

• Saves Money
• Saves Time
• Focus on Core Competencies

 

 Saves Money

• Dramatically reduce up front cost 
• Lower IT costs
• Pay as you go

Saves Time

• Browser based - eliminate desktop install
• Reduce deployment time by over 75%

Focus on Core Competencies  - free your organization from supporting high cost and time consuming IT functions:

• Purchasing and supporting server infrastructure.
• Providing equipment redundancies.
• Maintaining a labor intensive upgrade process.

 

At One Source we aim to help our customers do this with Montisvir, Complete order management software for your wholesale business.

 

 click the button   for more information

Integrated EDI Translation. A Horror Story with a Happy Ending.

Robert Wayne Footwear had a problem. 

They needed to use EDI to deal with many of their largest customers.  Unfortunately, they didn't have an integrated EDI translator.

This meant they had to print all the orders that came in through their EDI translator and then key them into their Order Management system.

Manually....

One at a time.

They sometimes spent four hours a day doing this!

Think about the inefficiency of that for a moment. And not just in terms of wasted man-hours.

A critical part of their business was also vulnerable to human error.

Fortunately, fate intervened. Robert Wayne met One Source Solutions at a trade show.

Since then everything has been different.

Using the the EDI translation module that is built into the Montisvir wholesale management system,
Robert Wayne no longer spends significant manpower on EDI translation.

Nor do they deal with the fallout from human error.

In addition they have changed the way they process Advanced Ship Notices (ASN’s).

Before Montisvir, they would process orders in their system and send them to the warehouse.

Then, they would key all the information into a 3rd party translator so it would produce labels, and picklists to tell the warehouse what to pack. These would then get mailed (via U.S. Postal Service)  to the warehouse. This would delay shipping for 2 days, and if the warehouse did not pack exactly as specified, it would result in a chargeback. Now, with Montisvir, this process is totally integrated and the ASN and label gets created when the goods get scanned – faster and 100% accurate.

With the 24x7 access to One Source Solutions customer service, and huge gains in productivity, Robert Wayne is proving that the right wholesale management software system is more than good business.

It is business.      

                                                               

5 things to consider when choosing a wholesale management system

1) Speed: Montisvir was designed to be the fastest wholesale system available. How fast? Well, consider this: a typical allocation takes just four seconds.

2) Robustness: Montisvir offers one of the most complete packages available. It includes fully-integrated EDI, Warehousing, Real Time Available to Sell, and First Cost capabilities.

3) Integration: Montisvir integrates seamlessly into your e-commerce set-up.

4) Deployment: Montisvir is quickly and easily deployed because no software needs to be installed. The system works through a browser.

What's more, if you don't have an IT infrastructure, there's no need to worry. You can connect to Montisvir and access your data via a hosted server in our office. We maintain and back-up your data every day. 

5) Flexibility: All management reports are easily exported into a variety of formats including PDF, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.