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Notes:
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On the morning GoToMeeting session with Steve. We started out and I asked Steve for some advice on what he would do for a wholesale manufacturing facility. I have a big custom project that I am trying to plan out and design some flow and processes. He had tons of great ideas dealing with flow processes and I was scratching them down on paper as fast as I could. Some of these are random notes, but it should get the idea across. - Create a recipe with all of the top selling items. Have each item listed at a zero quantity. You could also do the same thing on the advanced grid for my cart favorites. You get a similar outcome. Then use either the recipe/build or the smart group buttons to get a quick entry form for your top selling items. - You could also create a quote with a quantity of 1 for all items. You could then restore the quote and change quantities as needed. As a side note, quotes with a quantity of 0 will not work due to the cart code. The recipe/build and/or the advanced grid on the my cart favorite buttons do allows zeros. - Once you start getting a client's history, they will most likely buy the same or similar things over and over again. It saves tons of time if you take an old quote or old invoice and restore it to the cart. You tweak and change quantities and add or subtract as needed. It helps you know their patterns and saves tons of time. This is a great level to start helping your clients. - Once you get approval on the quote, flip it to a transitional or work in progress (WIP) invoice. This becomes your virtual work orders or what is needed. If needed, we could improve some of the search options and even add some flags to help with flow and what not. - Steve was saying that when they do some of their ordering... the companies use generic items and put out the request to multiple companies. Then, later on, they make normal PO's to bring things in. - When the invoices are shipped and filled, they flip it out of the transitional state (WIP state) into a normal customer invoice. This process already exists and maybe we could enhance it and make it smoother as well. - Steve started talking about how each customer ends up making a three point triangle of sorts. This was the theory. Each triangle was different just as each customer/client is different. The three different legs of the triangle were: 1. Getting and setting up the client. This is usually the longest leg. This is onboarding the client and getting them to make the first order. 2. The second leg was getting them the actual products and services. Depending, this could be shorter or longer based on needs and availability. 3. The third leg was maintenance and retention of that customer. This includes communicating, offering additional pieces, and building customer loyalty. Basically, keeping the customer a customer and making them happy. Every business needs to apply some of these same things to keep a healthy customer base. The goal is to keep shrinking the triangle as you work with your customers and clients. Good stuff. - One of the things that helps the most is a good ordering process. This could be ecommerce, internal shopping carts, custom carts, custom interfaces, recipe/builds, groupings, kitting, buttons, etc. - We talked about new technologies like predictive text for searching, tabs, cards, drop-downs, graphs and charts, and easy to use navigation and buttons. - We then talked about back orders and how Steve wants to totally re-write the back order process. Currently, most companies make one giant invoice or order and then try to fill it as they can. This creates a nightmare for inventory, receivables, payables, and other accounting problems. Steve would like us to go in the direction that we sell what we have, we bill for what we sell, and we make a second order with the other pieces. That order gets put in the transitional invoices or work in progress invoices and we chip away at it. If needed, we split that order up and bill for what is delivered. It helps us track our inventory better, we collect on what was really shipped, and it helps the person receiving it to keep their inventories better. Along with this, we may need some tools to help split things, monitor progress, do some sub locations, sub phases, and track virtual checkpoints and pods. Keep it real vs trying to put everything in one spot and then have it break from there. Steve would rather link, join, and tie-in multiple pieces to make a whole vs forcing everything under one roof. It is still all there, it just allows for more flexibility and monies are able to cross lines faster. Some great ideas. We could even detail this out more as we go. - We talked about chaining and moving inventory forward. This helps to track normal flow plus solves the back order issue. Basically, I've got this, I'll send you this, you still need this. Keep pushing the other items to the next invoice (splitting up the invoices) and still maintain a chain and/or connection. - If we do a back order, we back order a parent item. We then flip that to a child item or mini conversion as they come in and go out. The main back order only holds the parent item or a reference to the main item that is needed. - Steve showed me a page that he and Russell are working on. It is his campground reservation homepage. He is using the new snow owl theme to show tabs, cards, and show/hiding pieces to create a one-page interface. The web link is: top_secret/secure/campground_reservations_home.cfm. You do have to have the snow owl theme to use that page. - We talked about what options Russell could bring to our meeting. Russell brings easy and pretty. He is good at researching ideas and templates to show the ideas and concepts. He has hours and hours of looking at templates and thinking about how we could use similar type features. He then uses those ideas instead of trying to build them on his own. A great resource. - We then talked about maybe having them start with ecommerce and let that be the ordering process. We also talked about how sometimes it is harder to do 1 or 2 steps up as compared to going 4 to 6 steps up and getting the flow correct. It kinda depends on the goals. - We then talked more about how the online ordering and ecommerce solutions are changing the face of the land on which we live. The shopping cart is one your primary tools. That is huge. We also talked more about mobile and helping users and customers gain access through faster logins and such. - We talked about emails and communications, no more batches, doing real-time data and transactions as they happen, cash flow and how even daily cash flow could really help speed things up. We talked about using technology to your advantage and how automation of certain tasks can really help. Lot of talk about just in time and how that effects things. - The last concept we ended up talking about was ways of paying commissions and just in time deposits using ACH transactions for our reps and developers. The quicker we could get that money flowing out and into the right spots, it is like a watering system vs. flash flooding. It just helps things to keep going better. Lubing the system. After we were done talking, we worked with Alan and Calvin on some of their projects. I then spent some time backing up files and trying to make the bitbucket repository (code bank) smaller. |