Channel Sales Tracking Software For Dairy Food Products Companies

By Author: Rakes Kumar
Total Articles: 33
Comment this article

Recent surge in the demand for ‘off-the shelf’ Dairy Food Products has on one hand given rise to new business opportunities in the Dairy food industry and on the other hand highlighted unique business challenges related to supply chain. At the top level, supply chain complexity in the dairy food industry more or less resembles FMCG Business; however the ground level realities are even more challenging and complex than FMCG. The short shelf-life and highly demanding storage conditions of dairy food products further add to the worry of the manufacturers, distributors and all business partners in the channel. It therefore becomes very critical for business heads and supply chain managers to build a right sales and distribution strategy so that the divide between demand and supply always remains thin and stocks/inventory through-out the channel remains lean or Just-in-Time (JIT).

With an idea about the challenges in the supply chain of Dairy Food Products, let us focus on how these challenges can be taken care or what are the tools & techniques adopted by companies in Dairy Food Industry to overcome the ...
... limitations thrown by the nature of products and market operating condition. In this discussion, we are limiting our focus on the downward side of the supply chain process, which is most-commonly referred to as sales and distribution process of a company.

Typical sales and distribution structure of a dairy food company comprises of a Major Production Hub (usually located at the Central or Regional Head Office), next in line are the Depos attached to the Central or Regional Production Hub, Depots further distribute to Wholesale Distributors in an area or territory, Wholesale Distributors further sell to the Retailers or point of sale where customers walk-in to make final purchase. Having a multi-layered distribution structure and multiple role-players handling sales at each level, the scenario becomes very complex and business critical. Any deficiency in tracking sales & distribution information or communication gap at any of these layers can causes huge business loss to all parties involved and especially the principal manufacturer/supplier.

Having said this, let us quickly discuss about the key techniques that can be used to track and manage complete sales and distribution activities seamlessly across the vast universe of distributors & retailers. At the top level company should have a back to back mechanism of mapping the entire sales and distribution universe with various entities and role players as agents of product movement down the line. This can be done by implementing a comprehensive sales and distribution software platform having easy to configure master driven modules like Inventory Management, Distribution Channel Management, Sales Hierarchy Management, Product Price Management, Scheme Management, Target Management, Retailer and Salesman management, Field Sales Activities Management etc.

Overall, the core objective of having a sales and distribution system should be to empower the sales people on the field do conduct quick & informed business transactions and capture the information seamlessly so that the people at the back-office (supply & logistics) and at the management level can take effective decisions to keep the demand and supply streamlined. The Business Managers should be enabled to build business growth strategies and launch effective products and promotional schemes with the help of actual market information collected through the secondary & tertiary sales channels.

Rakesh Kumar is a business consultant of Zed Sales™, a leading sales tracking software in India. Zed Sales™ has lots of innovative features which fulfill your needs of online sales and distribution management software, sales management software, target management software and more. Please visit www.zedsales.in for further details.