Every distributor has a subset of customers that rate special attention. It’s that age-old adage…20% of your customers generate 80% of your business. When this segment places orders, you want to take extra steps to make sure you get every order just right.
That’s where a handy feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can give you a big assist. As a field you can add to your Sales Order screen, Special Order allows you to attach the order to a supplier purchase order in order to make sure specified inventory is held aside for that customer.
Allocating Items to an Important Customer
Consider an example where ABC Company, one of your top customers, places an order for 250 widgets. You source those widgets from XYZ Supplier, and your inventory team recently placed an order for 750 widgets that are due to arrive in your warehouse in three days.
With the Special Order function in Business Central, you can allocate 250 of the widgets to ABC Company and give your contact a heads-up on when to expect the widgets to arrive. In addition to ensuring you take care of this important customer, the process takes those widgets out of your available inventory. Someone else on the sales won’t think they can sell those 250 widgets to another customer.
Enhancing Your Special Order Process
In addition to automating the Special Order process, Business Central tracks all activity so that a sales order cannot access items that are already reserved. In the example above, if all 750 widgets were allocated to another important customer, Business Central would prompt the user to create a new purchase order against which to allocate the 250 widgets.
If you have set up a portal through which your customers can order products, you can use the Microsoft Power Automate tool to further automate the Special Order process in Business Central. You can designate important customers so that any time they place an order, if the items aren’t already in your warehouse, the system automatically sets up a Special Order on a supplier purchase order. As soon as the items arrive in your warehouse, you can then ship them to your customer.
Traceability Across the Order Lifecycle
Business Central also provides Special Order traceability. You can track orders as they make their way from your supplier to your warehouse and then to customer sites. It’s a great way to make sure you continue to take care of that top 20% and get every order right.
To learn more about Dynamics 365 Business Central and how to set up the Special Order process, contact Western Computer today.
