Moneyball for Growth

If you are stymied with geographical growth and think that many of your customers are not buying all they can from you, the odds are stacked in your favor that they aren\’t.  Why? Because you don\’t know. Unless you have access to all your sales data and more importantly your sales people have access to it, then you are flying blind. Compound this if you are running a 10+ year old ERP system which more that likely can\’t tell you what the customer is not buying.That wealth of information and how you use it can grow top line revenue. And that\’s the essence of Money Ball … identifying trend and nuances that make a difference in performance and then optimizing them for you … before your competition realizes it.

For distributor clients we term gaining access to that information as similar to Moneyball, the Oakland Athletics\’ means to success that was turned into a book and then a movie. In that Brad Pitt movie they use stats to build and field a team that went to the playoffs. The term that came out of that movie was Predictive Analytics. Using numbers and stats to built a team. Granted the distribution business is not the same as major league baseball, but by exposing what your customers are NOT BUYING, offers the opportunity to sell additional product.
Your sales people coupled with this information (predictive analytics) and persistence can grow your top line revenue. It gives your company the opportunity to also create more demand beyond what they weren\’t buying from you.  There are all sorts of claims floating around about how much increased revenue it can create and they start at 10-25%. Each company inevitably develops their own set of numbers.

ADD ON\’s

So the question for many will be, \”I want to keep my existing ERP, where do I go to find a add tool to help me?\” Here is a link to a number of products that can generate the Predictive Analytical numbers you seek. We\’ve seen a number the installations over the last few months and the suggestion is that you\’ll probably want one that does not involve your IT department very much (click here) to learn about Zillant. Your IT department probably has their hands full with other request. If your interested in what we\’ve actually seen installed, shoot me an email at allen@allenray.com   We also mentioned some others in our 16 Distribution Trends for 2016 posting.

Replace your Technology Footprint

Now if your inclined to replace your ERP system, with most newer systems coming with BI, CRM, you can expect to see Predictive Analytics built into the base offering. Some of the most popular are IBIS\’s Microsoft AX, SAP , Oracle. And then for those want their ERP in the Cloud there is INFOR and Epicor Eclipse. One of the newest ERP\’s that offers both on-premise and cloud with many functions that many charge for is Sourceware ERP Software.

Additional Thoughts

With all the market turmoil and the indecisiveness of the Federal Reserve and the lack of inflation (some are seeing price decreases in selected product categories), top line revenue is very important. It\’s all about taking share and the best place to take it is with the prospects you know … your customers.
You now have the opportunity to open up data that has been there all along, but you couldn\’t see. The observation that is important is how easy will it be for your sales organization to buy into the tools you furnish them?. So, the suggestion is should you involve them in the selection process? The second observation is to pay attention to the packages that do not require much IT involvement. And a last thought is that the most expensive system does not always equal the best results. You want a balance of ease of usage with robustness.
For those of you that use a Predictive Analysis tool, have you seen the benefits? How have you achieved sales force adoption?