Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Quick - name one thing sadly lacking in Exploris - yep - good sales stats


When Exploris was just a gleam in the eyes of many and the writer was asked to be on the advisory council --the better thinks were wildly imagining all the great things that a new system could or should do ... one of them is to have GREAT reporting on what our customers are buying.

Sadly this has not happened and may never happen .... and with recent rumoured changes in TECH-NET rebates -- it is all the more required.

LOOK-- a jobber should be able to DRILL DOWN and look at sales numbers .... what are my stores sales in total ... then he should have the option of looking at a couple of options"
-what do I do by customer type ( all farmers - all body shop .. etc )
-what do I do by product groups or buckets - ( all tool lines - all brake related lines .. etc )

and importantly --what do I do by banner programs - what are my tech net sales .... as a group ... or what do my e-sales do by the group .... and get data LIVE --NOW -- now 45 to 60 days afterwards ....in the case of e-sales

And if we are reviewing sales and comparing to 'INDUSTRY AVERAGES' - we need to have timely LIVE data ... and have the ability to review with our customers over a period of months to see if there are mis-understandings or issues that need to be resolved thru gentle and consistent suasion ...

Exploris needs to be a management tool - not just a typewriter and an adding machine. We need better functionality in Exploris ... and we need it now ... 90% of all updated are BUG fixes --lets go to IMPROVEMENTS that we can use to be smarter and better ....




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