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Source: American Fastener Journal, September, 2004

As a fastener distributor, your business and business processes differ from those of any supplier in any other industry. You must manage tons of tiny items, calculate complicated cost and pricing structures, and coordinate a variety of multi-stage processes.

Your enterprise software solution - the system on which your business runs - should come from a company that understands your needs and knows that dealing with brokers and customs agents can be just as important as managing customer relationships, and also understands that quality control is crucial.

How Technology Should Help You Handle Your Processes

Like most fastener distributors, you regularly send items out of the warehouse to be reworked to meet customers' requests.

To help better serve your customers, your software solution should enable you to monitor material after it is received from the vendor but before you send it to the customer by tracking multi-stage, secondary processes like plating and rework. For example, if you send five quarter kegs of quarter-inch hex cap screws out of the warehouse for zinc plating, your technology solution should track purchase orders, costing, and quantities for the lot of screws, as well as the period of time the inventory is off your premises, to allow for better inventory control.

Your solution should also manage inventory sent for secondary processing through a Work in Progress account. A Work in Progress account helps you track inventory for financial and inventory evaluation purposes - so you always know how much is in stock, how much is available, and to whom it is allocated. Additionally, because unfortunate things like shrinkage and damage may occur, your solution should factor these costs into the final price of your products to ensure you always stay profitable.

Also, unlike many other sectors of the hard goods industry, fasteners have no true standard units of measure. You might buy anchors, bolts, and rivets from your vendor by the pallet, stock them by the quarter keg, then sell them by the piece. Your enterprise software solution should offer you flexibility in defining item measurements, while also allowing you to assign each SKU an unlimited number of units of measure. This will help you to efficiently manage and better understand inventory levels - all while communicating more effectively with your vendors and customers.

Tools to Manage Your Customer's Inventory

Although one out-of-stock nut or bolt can shut down a production line, most of your customers do not want to worry about C-class items. So, they count on you to manage their inventories - and ensure that they always have what they need to operate at maximum efficiency.

Your software solution should give you the ability to manage any customer's inventory, either through consignment - when you keep your stock in their warehouses; or through bin management - when you regularly replenish SKUs at their locations. You should be able to schedule blanket releases, track what inventory is with which customer, and monitor usage trends to determine how much stock you need to carry to satisfy needs.

Plus, personal digital assistant (PDA) technology makes it easier than ever to quickly and easily replenish stock at customer locations. You can use PDAs to scan bin bar codes, and determine how much inventory to place in each location. PDA scan-and-validate technology cuts the errors associated with jotting down SKUs manually, while improving customer service by speeding counting processes and improving accuracy.

It Does Not Stop at the Distributor

Customers demand more than just vendor-managed inventory services. You need to give them the ability to access your Web site around the clock - without a desktop or laptop computer. Many technology providers now have the answer: They offer PDA integration that enables customers to access your Web site anytime, anywhere. This helps you increase sales by enabling customers to request SKUs from job sites. Your outside sales force benefits, too - it is much easier to enter orders from customers locations from a PDA than it is to scribble them down on sheets of paper or type them in on a laptop computer.

Because they probably work with you more than any of their customers or other vendors, your customers see you as an integral business partner. It is not you against them anymore. You need to provide them with the tools and technology that will help them simplify daily business processes while you work to keep costs - and prices - down. Your customers benefit from superior, convenient service - and you benefit from increased sales and a loyal, devoted customer base. It is truly all about collaboration - and a good technology solution will make this collaboration easy and mutually beneficial.

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