The increasing role of online shopping and shipping means getting a handle on your inventory is even more important. This is why you should consider investing in hosted enterprise resource planning software. Examine these important benefits to see how a hosted Dynamics AX can work for you.
- Handling Inventory
First, your hosted ERP provides unified standards across all your warehouses, offices and any other branch of your business. In addition, it will monitor your company’s performance and provide analysis and statistics that you can use to improve your operations. Also, thanks to the increasing trade across borders, your company may have to expand into foreign markets just to stay ahead of the game. The great news about hosted Dynamics AX is that your software has localization support that allows it to translate into multiple languages and handle the currency of different countries, so you’ll know what the exchange rate is and how to make sure you’re getting the correct amount for your product.
- Improved Customer Service
Your customers are like gold. You want them to be satisfied with the service and goods of your business, so when one of them calls your customer service help line, your customer professionals should be ready to handle anything they need. Say a customer is calling about the status of an order. Through a hosted ERP solution, a service professional can access all the information about that product, including the status of the production of the item. Your professional will be able to tell if production has started, if it’s midway through production, or if it’s almost complete. Perhaps your service technician needs to know if the item is in stock. Your technician can also offer transportation options for the product. If they’re taking an order, they can choose between various post office options or the company’s preferred private shipping service.
- Forecasting Demand
Every business would love to hire a Nostradamus to tell them what the buying public is looking for in future years. While a Nostradamus isn’t available, you can use the forecasting feature on hosted Dynamics AX to predict demand. It starts by inputting historical sales data into Dynamics AX in Azure, where it is analyzed and a statistical baseline forecast is produced. Don’t worry about having to use a single data program. You can import data from programs like Excel or comma-separated value (CSV) files. From there, you’ll be able to see future demand trends and confidence intervals. This kind of forecasting also allows you to make adjustments so you can remove outliers and make the data more accurate, which will result in a more precise projection. These forecasts allow your company to stock up on the products that it’s more likely to sell and not waste space on inventory that isn’t going to sell many units. You’ll also be able to manage your budget better and if spikes in customer orders are anticipated, you won’t be caught be surprised.
Hosted ERP is all about giving you the necessary tools to control, monitor and optimize your inventory for maximum efficiency. And with its ability to forecast demand, you’ll have important insight into what the public will want and how you can steer your company in the future.