KPI Feature Spotlight: B2Bs Ready to Despatch

Avoid errors in back-to-back deliveries and boost your service efficiency

When it comes to stock management, accuracy and efficiency are key. Without accurate and efficient stock management, it’s impossible for a merchant business to deliver excellent customer service and have an up to date, real picture of what stock is on hand.

Managing the logistics of a busy stock yard is never an easy task; and when you’re managing multiple sites and different types of delivery, it only adds to the complexity. It's too easy for parts of orders to be overlooked or delayed thanks to inefficient systems and processes.

That’s why we’ve built in lots of alerts, reminders and clear measures of where stock is and where it needs to go.

These are just a few of the KPIs that UT400 has to offer; there are over 110 in total. But each one adds value in its own way.

Spotlight feature: B2B Ready to Despatch

As you’ll know, deliveries fundamentally fall into three broad areas:

- Supply from stock already on hand in your yard or warehouse

- Direct to site, taking your own depot out of the delivery equation and letting your supplier deliver direct to your client

- Back to back, where your supplier delivers to you and you despatch to the customer

Traditionally though, ERP systems have struggled with back to back deliveries. Often it’s not 100% of an order that’s due to go out, and you need to process multiple onward or into-stock elements. In many cases, ERP systems will process a B2B delivery as automatically despatched – which is fine when it does genuinely go straight back out, but all too often the delivery is split, and it’s just too easy to miss a customer order. You sit there happily with the system telling you the order has gone out, while the customer is wondering where their order is.

This is exactly the kind of issues that UT400 is designed to remedy. It’s super-simple to input the intended destinations as the order is placed, so the system will flag up exactly what is due to go out to a customer when. It sounds obvious, but most systems aren’t set up to handle this function, and certainly not set up to do it as simply as UT400.

The system will:

- Record goods-in and update stock records accordingly, taking into account what is already on order to go elsewhere, avoiding double-selling;

- Alert you when an order is sitting in the yard waiting to go out

- Prompt you in advance that a customer order is due to be despatched

- Enable faster turnaround of B2B orders however complex they might be, with fewer administrative processes to complete

- Communicate to the customer when goods are en route

Simple input at Purchase Order stage

When you raise the PO, you simply select the order type, allowing you to allocate which elements of the order are for B2B as opposed to into stock.

When that delivery arrives and is scanned into the system, all the relevant stock levels will be updated, and you’ll be alerted to the fact that the B2B portion of the order is ready to go out.

Orders upcoming or fulfilled are flagged in green, while imminent or overdue orders are highlighted in red, making them almost impossible to miss.

Automated Digital Communications Tracking

Once it has been despatched, electronic delivery notes, PoDs and invoices can all be sent automatically. Everything is recorded in the system meaning nothing can get lost on the way or forgotten to input.

It’s a nice prompt, allowing peace of mind for your sales, stock management and logistics teams, but is also a valuable tool in providing fast, efficient service with great communication, all of which will help your customers feel completely satisfied with the service you’ve provided.

And all from one little KPI. Imagine the power of all 110…