Your ERP, in your pocket

Companies usually buy it for the sales team and then find the warehouse gets more out of it. Counting stock on a phone while walking the aisle removes the step where somebody types a paper count into a computer that evening, which is where most good counts go wrong.

The old sequence has three points where it can break. The rep writes the order, the office keys it in, and the warehouse discovers one line is not available. Somebody phones the customer, the order changes, and the delivery goes out a day late.

Taking out the re-keying step takes out most of that. The order is created once, by the person who agreed it, in front of the person who asked for it.

It changes upselling too, quietly. A rep who can see what a shop bought last month and what is sitting in the warehouse has something specific to suggest. A rep with a paper pad has memory and a hunch.

Most delivery disputes are timing disputes. The customer says nothing arrived, the office says it went out on Tuesday, and the only evidence is a signed note in a folder in a van that is currently somewhere near Zahle.

Closing at the client site puts the record in the system while the driver is still standing there. If something was refused or came back, that goes on the same record instead of being explained verbally three days later.

For the office the useful part is the open trip view. You can see what is out for delivery right now without calling four drivers one at a time.

The hours saved are the obvious part. The bigger change is that head office is looking at today instead of yesterday, so a shortage, a credit problem or a delivery that failed can be dealt with while the team is still out.

Sales routes drift towards the customers who are easy to reach and pleasant to deal with. That is human, and it stays invisible until somebody counts.

The report most managers end up living in is the one listing customers with no visit in the last two months. It usually contains accounts that mattered a year ago and quietly stopped ordering without anyone raising it.

GPS check ins exist and they do get used for supervision. The more useful reading is planning. If a route takes longer than the working day allows, the route is wrong, and the same data shows you that.

The honest caveat: offline mode protects you from losing work, not from being out of date. A rep who has been offline since morning is looking at this morning's stock position. For most distribution businesses that is fine. For anyone selling scarce, high value items to several customers at once, it is worth thinking through before go live.

The other practical point is who owns the phone. When reps use personal devices, people leave and take the history of the relationship with them, and nobody enjoys installing a work app on a phone they paid for themselves. Company devices avoid an argument that always arrives eventually.

Training is short but it should be done with the real route. An hour in a meeting room teaches the buttons. A morning walking a route with the team surfaces the things that will otherwise be quietly abandoned in week three.