CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise
Executive Brief
Revolutionize distribution operations with a modern ERP system
Brochure
Infor CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise
Revolutionize distribution operations with a modern ERP system
CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise is a comprehensive, scalable cloud solution designed for large, global wholesale distributors who are focused on growth, customer engagement, and have demands for extended services.
CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise can help boost performance across your entire organization. Many of the top global distribution companies use Infor’s core solutions, including 17 of the top 20 industrial distributors, 7 of the top 10 plumbing/HVAC distributors, 8 of the top 10 electrical distributors, and 6 of the top 10 building material distributors.
Sales management
Maximize your global sales through a sophisticated sales order management system that serves as the hub for your customer and pricing information. You will also be able to gain better control over discounts, promotions, and rebates.
Value-added services
Meet increasing customer demands for more comprehensive services, such as kitting, manufacturing, assembly, rental, service, and more.
Supply chain management
Manage the complex planning, scheduling, fulfillment, and execution of your global supply chain for both simple and complex distribution networks with full support for warehouse and transport management, lot-allocation and traceability processes, internal distribution orders, statistics, and more.
Financial management
Access and use the crucial information that drives your business decisions by being able to capture, analyze, and simulate critical trends based on your unique business goals and requirements. You’ll be able to cut costs, eliminate redundancies, streamline activities, and allow redeployment of assets to more profitable activities with a highly configurable structure that can be tailored to meet local, regional, national, and global business models.
Rebate management
Easily and quickly recover the rebates you are entitled to and achieve the best possible product margins with a rebate management tool that handles the rebate claim process from beginning to end.
Purchasing
Make intelligent purchasing decisions with access to a centralized interface that puts information at your fingertips. You will also be able to manage the purchase of stock and non-stock products with advanced order control, inventory management, and other flexible features.
Complex pricing
Whether your pricing structures are simple or complex, you will be able to manage the flow from planning and calculating prices and agreements through following up on results in sales statistics. You will be able to increase sales and minimize manual input and costs of order entry, billing, and credit note handling with highly automated processes.
Demand planning
Review sales forecasts and capture market intelligence with a collaborative workflow that supports automatic forecast methods, competitive forecasting, dynamic grouping, and data aggregation. You will be able to find the best fit among multiple forecast methods and easily choose the data that best meets your demand and forecast needs.
Reliability you can trust
With CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise, you get guaranteed levels of availability and system up-time that are both difficult and costly to replicate with internal resources.
Technologically advanced ERP systems are an investment in your company’s operations, efficiency, intelligence, and productivity. Every feature of a modern ERP system ultimately ties back to these improvements, which enable distributors to become more productive, more competitive, and better positioned to meet customers’ needs.
Driving forces behind the disruption
To understand why it is important to evolve and utilize modern technology to transform your business, it is helpful to discuss the business drivers facing wholesale distributors today. While many of the high-level issues may seem like the same challenges the industry has been fighting for years, the specifics have evolved - requiring you to take a fresh look at your business and core competencies in order to determine the best path for the future.
Omni-channel sales
Long gone are the days when distributors could rely on just phone orders, counter sales, and showroom sales. On the other hand, selling exclusively online can limit reach as well - missing out on other channel opportunities. Even if a business is in a niche with little competition today, that does not mean it will stay that way. Considering the number of industries Amazon Business has already expanded into, it is likely just a matter of time before that niche is served by Amazon, and then quickly followed by copy-cats.
Value-added services
In an age where price is no longer a competitive advantage, distributors need to find innovative ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. This starts with distributors finding new ways to help solve their customers’ problems through value-added services. Depending on which industries a distributor serves, these service opportunities are going to differ, but they all have one thing in common - they go beyond typical, everyday customer service (such as offering expedited shipping or handling returns and replacements).
Margin control
Top-heavy competition is driving product prices down, while wages, healthcare costs, and transportation costs are rising. Like never, distributors must look for ways to improve efficiency and automate business processes.
Workforce optimization
Today’s wholesale distribution workforce is very dynamic, and the distributors are finding it difficult to interest new talent. Many of the industries that distributors serve have seasonal fluctuations, which means that workforce size and the number of temporary employees can vary significantly throughout the year. With all these variables, it can be difficult to create a work environment that maximizes worker productivity while still meeting the expectations of modern employees and keeping them engaged.
Digital transformation
Whether its expanding omni-channel sales, increasing margins, differentiating through value-add services, or optimizing the workforce, these demands all rely on utilizing modern technology. It is this digital transformation of the way the wholesale distribution industry operates that can help promote increased efficiency and effectiveness of existing processes. It opens the door to differentiation - allowing distributors to rethink approaches and create new data-driven ways to deliver and elevate.