by John Nicholas
Not only do we have an economic downturn, but today's businesses must navigate a number of major issues from heightened competition to a demand for more customized product. Even in tough times, a successful company must deliver on the bottom-line. There is a tendency and a mindset with most every company that to increase revenue, you just need to move more product out the door. In a challenging economic environment, the pressure is especially on to increase sales.
The obvious problem is that when money is tight for individuals, it is hard to just sell more. Companies must look for additional ways to boost revenue. That means not putting up with some areas that there has been ongoing revenue lost (and every organization has those areas of loss that they have been turning a blind eye to). Especially in times like this, you must get some of the money back that you have been leaving on the table! This means simplifying, standardizing and continually improving processes in every area of the organization.
Automating manual processes boosts productivity and real-time access to more accurate information. This is a key component to businesses achieving new levels of efficiency and profitability. This includes improving cash flow by reducing order to cash cycle times. It means reducing costs by eliminating manual processes and establishing real-time visibility allowing you to better manage inventory. It especially means better managing the company’s network of business relationships. The management of this network of relationships is of course the essence of supply chain management.
Successful supply chain management requires focusing on improvements in performance that result from better management of key relationships. To do this you must improve visibility into your business. At Answers Systems we are dedicated to helping our foodservice manufacturer clients not only improve their processes but also unlock the full value of their data assets! We do this in several areas:
- Sales/billback data collection (from almost 2000 distributors and operators. We acquire it, map it, and scrub it, providing a clean electronic feedback to our manufacturer clients.
- Contract management ( our system captures terms of deals, has a robust approval process, and monitors compliance & performance)
- Claim reconciliation and claim settlement (verifies and reconciles, and settles terms of agreement against the claim) Our push button rebill process, (for ineligible deductions), is successfully collecting up to 80% of everything rebilled.
- Analytics and reporting (performance, compliance, who is buying and who is not, detailed profitability, etc)
There is a whole lot of money left on the table by most foodservice manufacturers. Our job at Answers Systems is in helping them get many of those dollars back, and it is working! We are seeing significant ROI for our manufacturer clients through improving and automating processes and in increasing visibility to vital parts of our clients business.
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supply chain management,
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