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Transformation trends within Wholesale
A shift to multi channel with demanding customers who increasingly send products back and demand more flexibility from you as a supplier. Building and maintaining a healthy wholesale business is certainly not easy. How do you anticipate the trends in the wholesale industry and how do you adapt your IT solutions to them? These 4 business trends trigger digital transformation in wholesale companies.
Trend 1: Increasing customer demands
Customers are making increasingly higher demands on service. Logistical flexibility is expected more and more. Same day delivery and fixed time slots certainly make B2B more and more logistically challenging. Moreover, by delivering within one day or loading/unloading on time you only meet the demands. A clear trend is the quest of wholesale companies to exceed expectations and differentiate themselves.
Meet/exceed expectations and still make a margin? Then the SAP Service Cloud has added value for your company.
Trend 2: Serving B2B and B2C
Wholesale companies are increasingly opening their web shops to the B2C market. In doing so, they are tapping into an additional revenue market. But the order of one that this entails is also a challenge. The logistical process is often set up for full pallets, which continue to exist alongside the orders of one. The diversity of flows and order forms call for a digital transition so that both the order and return process are tightly organized.
With Intelligent Logistics you can set up your logistics process in such a way that you can serve both B2B and B2C intelligently.
Trend 3: Returns
The number of returns has risen explosively. B2B customers are increasingly behaving like B2C customers and think it is only normal to return products. So how do you maintain your margin? And how do you organize the logistical process so that the return goes through a quality check and, preferably, is still saleable? We see more and more wholesale companies transforming their IT processes in response to these and other questions.
SAP has a special application for returns. This Customer Returns Fiori app is part of the SAP EWM solution.
Trend 4: Price pressure through transparency
All prices can be found online nowadays. This transparency increases the price pressure because it is easy for customers to shop around. This trend means that wholesale companies need to be increasingly in control of their costs. They want to have continuous insight into their margin and act on it if it comes under pressure.