Grendata Computer Systems

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Retail Management
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Retail Management System:

    This product was designed with the help of a major player in the Furniture Retail Market. It took us 13 months to come up with the prototype. This package was installed on our customers computer and was then debugged on the fly. Once installed, it was never shut down and our customer never went back to the old way of doing things.

    This package is centralized around a "customer contract" where all information is entered at time of sale. This includes purchasing customer name, address etc as well as "ship to" address. Also included in the information are such items as "type of delivery", some of which are "as soon as possible", "Scheduled", "Customer will Advise", "Take With" etc etc. These delivery types have a direct bearing on how the stock will be handled to fulfill the order. For example, if a contract is designated as a "Take With", the operator must choose stock from the store (or very close by warehouse). Obviously the customer cannot "take" a product if it is in another town. Other delivery types designate how the shippers phone list will be prepared. If a "Scheduled" delivery is chosen, then of course the "scheduled date" must be entered also.

    The main body of the contract includes the stock being sold. Each stock number entered must also be an inventory part. If it is not, then the appropriate operator must add the SKU to the inventory. The reason for this capability is that, items being sold might be a special order, and have never been part of your normal stock before.

    There are also some key words and characters that can be used to massage the final contract. For example our one client uses "*misc" to indicate a miscellaneous item being sold. These are small items that they do not want to carry in normal inventory. We call this type of entry a "star item". You can also enter "DISC" as an SKU and this lets you enter a discount to the customer either as a dollar amount or as a percentage. This amount is deducted from the full price as entered. By the way, when an item is entered, the cost automatically appears from the inventory record, but can be overridden by the operator.

    There are parameter files where you have previously entered tax information and also the default type of contract calculation. For example, if you operate in Ontario, you will have GST and PST to add to the amount of goods. You will have previously entered the GST as 7% and the PST as 8%. You will have specified that during a certain time period, contracts will be of "calculation type 1". This is the standard sale, where taxes are calculated on top of retail. You might also specify other types where you "pay the GST" but the customer pays the PST, or where you "pay both taxes". No matter how you do it, you simply enter the same retail price for your product and the computer will calculate the appropriate retail and then add taxes back to the contract.. When the contract is finalized (invoiced), the appropriate files are updated so that your shipping department has all the information required to begin phoning customers and arranging deliveries. At this point, the dispatcher completes his delivery schedule for a truck run, prints a picker report for warehouse personnel to retrieve goods from the shelves, prints delivery slips and account statements for each customer etc. If a sale is made in one of your stores, but stock is some-where-else, an automatic entry is made into the transfer file of the appropriate store so that when the next "transfer report" is printed, that item will be shipped to the selling store for delivery.

Key Benefits

• Ease of Use

  Almost every operation in your business revolves around this customer contract and is totally automated. You still need some dedicated personnel but a few people can perform a lot of work. For example, one of our clients has 4 stores and two major warehouses. Their delivery area is all of Southern Ontario and North almost to the top of Georgian Bay. They have two staff aiding two purchasers to control all inventory. Another staff person, looks after all Special Ordering.

   

• Automated operation :

  Special Order has been automated to the point where, once a customer contract has been scrutinized and processed, the fax to the manufacturer is automatically produced in the wee hours of the morning (save that phone bill). This save the operator in this department about 3 hours a day of what used to be a tedious job of sending faxes by hand.

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This page was last updated 05/11/2006 01:27 PM