Their product range is a mind-blowing diversity of hundreds of thousands plastic things like cross-connects, splitters, patch cords, cable trunkings, all sorts of cable trays, screws, bolts, etc.
A decent customer order contains several hundreds of items; a good one — several thousands.
Orders are, naturally, emailed to them in the Excel format: "How much? Is it available now? If not, then when
will it be? If it won’t, what’s the most suitable replacement?"
It takes one human power of a salesperson anywhere from one hour to two days to handle such an order. Of course, if that person is competent, experienced and knows the product well?.
What if it’s a newbie?
What if human errors?
Primitive means of automation based on the same Excel (e.g., for comparing product codes) could ease the
situation a lot.
?If only customers could be made fill in those codes, or if the said customers wouldn’t send out such inquiries to different suppliers, each one of whom has their own product codes.
Everything changed after transiting into dia$par.
A customer goes online to his personal account on a b2b portal and uploads his specification in an xls/pdf format. A few seconds after he pressing the button, he receives a quotation, including info on immediate availability or transition status, prices, delivery times.
?Items from the outside file are recognized and linked to the ABN.ru inside product classification via multilevel intelligent algorithms of dia$par.
As an addition, there are alternative quotations that are set up according to the configured business logic.
E.g., with the database of alternatives in mind, dia$par offers replacements, choosing products from brands with a higher margin. Or from marked down non-sellers, returned on a warranty.
As a result, the customer has several scenarios to choose from, along with an expert opinion of the supplier.
Similar features are available in the sales person workbench for dealing with that one percent of, let’s say, unique customers, who won’t interact with the heartless b2b.
The form used to handle inquiries has all the necessary functions: adding products to the new product reservation form, emailing the issued invoice, linking unrecognized items manually, updating prices in the inquiry.
Automatic processing of giant xls files, apart from everything else, is in great demand with reselling companies for an automatic update of their price lists based on MRSPs (minimum recommended selling prices).
Results: the speed of handling customer inquiries reached the second cosmic velocity. The requirement in sales staff decreased 15 times.
The number of errors decreased to a statistically insignificant level.
Customer loyalty… Well, you understand.
Especially, if the sorrows of processing multi-thousand-line xls files are any familiar to you.
