Cloud ERP Solution: Global Bike Parts Distribution

Cloud ERP Solution

A Cloud ERP solution is all the rage in the market right now. A cloud ERP solution is an enterprise resource planning system (ERP) based on the cloud of a vendor rather than on-premise. This allows the users/businesses the flexibility of being able to access and do businesses from anywhere and to be tied up.

Versa Cloud ERP solution for Global Bike Parts Distribution

Brett has a small but fast-growing company that is doing things that even his biggest competitors can’t do. His company is a master distributor – a distributor to distributors (B2B) ‐ for bike parts and accessories. He also sells to end customers directly (B2C).

The Requirements for a Cloud ERP Solution

Portals
- Dealer
- Independent Sales Reps
- Product Catalog
- Customer Specific Capabilities
Retail Feed
- Product Detail
- Inventory Levels
- Orders / Confirmation
Advanced Warehouse Management
- Pick-Pack-Ship
- Barcodes / Scanners

When he started his business, he deployed QuickBooks Enterprise to manage his financials, Agiliron (QuickBooks add-on) to manage his inventory, and ShipStation for shipping.

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Unfortunately, for Brett he had the same problem that many add-on users face. The integrations were not very reliable. Data in each of the systems was not synchronized. The biggest problem was getting vendors of these systems to accept ownership for problems. Each one pointed to the other and nothing got done. All the while customers suffered as did the business. In searching for a system, Brett looked for a vendor who would deliver solution without pointing fingers. Beyond that, he was looking for a single cloud product without the need for add-ons.

Since Brett had aggressive expansion plans, with respect to his B2B business, having a dealer portal was important to him. It would allow dealers to log in directly to his business system, browse through products, check inventory levels, and purchase on terms that were unique to them. In addition, it had to support Independent Sales Representatives. These reps would manage dealers via a Sales Rep Portal; including monitoring the activities of assigned dealers, placing orders on their behalf, and tracking their orders for them.

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Brett’s B2B business included dealing with retail chains. To support these chains Brett needed the system to offer a real-time feed of product inventory levels. The chains, in turn, could make these products available on their own websites, as well as in their POS systems.

At the same time, Brett also planned to aggressively grow his B2C business. His plans included expanding his online presence to multiple owned sites, as well as eBay, Amazon, and Walmart. The ability to manage multiple e-commerce sites from a single ERP system was essential.

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Finally, since Brett shipped products all over the world, it was important that the pick-pack-ship process be such that the chances of shipping the wrong item (requiring replacement) were completely eliminated; via the use of bar-code scanners at every stage of the shipping process.