IT ON CLOUD NINE
Sustainability must remain at the top of the business agenda and at the heart of every organisation. Climate change needs consistent, sustained effort from everyone. Ten-25 Software’s Ian Oldrey tells BMJ he believes cloud ERP software can help merchants drive sustainability across every business function.
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n order to have an impact, it’s important to consider that there is more to sustainability than meets the eye. It’s not only about responsible sourcing of materials, recycling and reducing waste – sustainability goes deep into every process and system used in every business. It is also about sustaining your own business and workforce, about educating customers and making conscious decisions every day to do better, and to do more. The good news is that, precisely because it affects every business function, there is a lot we can all do to make a difference, from micro-changes to processes or habits that combine to create greater compound improvements, to major initiatives which will reap immediate and significant rewards. Business practices have moved on a long way in recent years, and the rise of cloud technology has expedited many efficiencies which can have significant impact on sustainability. A cloud-based ERP system, which increasing numbers of merchants are choosing, can assist the drive for sustainability across every merchant business. An industry- specific ERP system will help your business to become more measurable and responsible, driving efficiencies and improvements to processes across every area.
Sustainability falls into many broad areas, from environmental impact like the responsible sourcing and monitoring of materials to enhanced logistics co-ordination, and even workforce wellbeing. Here are just ten of the many ways a digital ERP system can help your merchant business drive sustainability every day. There are 10 siginificant ways that a cloud- based system can help to improve a merchant businesses’ long-term sustainability.
Use less paper every day It may sound insignificant but the amount of paper used in a merchant business really does add up. A digital cloud system enables the simple transfer and recording of digital documents, even down to delivery notes and PoDs. Add in POs, invoicing, digital product
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certification and so on, and you can start to see how the quantities of paper being used across the business can quickly rack up. Plus of course there are the added advantages of easier storage, accessibility and record-keeping
Source responsibly
This is a huge advantage of a good, industry- specific cloud ERP system. Your software can help you to actively seek out the most responsible, sustainable sources of materials, whether that be FSC and PEFC certified timber or simple comparisons between steel sources and suitability.
You can also keep detailed records more simply to ensure future orders and choices maintain these selections as well, and you can add in reminders and alerts to prompt anyone ordering materials to check particular criteria. In the same way that every merchant can help to educate its customers on more sustainable choices, so merchants can employ those choices throughout their workforce.
Certification documenting Thanks to digital documentation and simpler filing, it’s never been easier to store, access and filter product certification, helping you to select responsible materials in the first place and ensure the audit trail is intact from supplier to end user.
Even for very complex certification requirements (such as those for steel, for example), the process is vastly simplified, making it easier to make the right choices and maintain a detailed and accessible audit trail for responsible sourcing. Reduce waste
This is a broad area as reduced waste is something that goes across the entire business. Put simply, more efficient stock management results in reduced wastage, as you manage overstocks more effectively, forecast more accurately and streamline processes.
A really flexible system will enable you to fully analyse what stock is performing well
and what isn’t so you can actively manage the gaps and opportunities, even to the point of breaking down packs or lengths to more popular specifications. Being able to identify areas of the stock profile where performance needs focus will enable you to make more of your stock and keep replenishment as efficient as possible.
There is also a reduction of administrative time and wasted resource on the running and documentation of the business, including paperwork, to reduce waste in many ways throughout the business.
Re-use, re-deploy, re-cycle Using your ERP system to drive effective and accurate stock management has so many benefits for sustainability it requires more than one point in this list. Using various KPIs, such as stock turn, stock confidence, order frequency and so on, you can see very easily which products are driving your business forward and which are languishing in the yard, costing you more than they’re making. Identifying these culprits can present great opportunities for repositioning or re-using products in other ways; for example, if you’re selling out of 2m lengths of timber but overflowing with 4m, there seems a simple solution… And you should have total control over the stock classification in your system too.
Reclassify
Just as supermarkets have been on a drive to reduce waste, there are plenty of products that are damaged in transit or production which would normally be written off and wasted. However, because your ERP system should give you the flexibility to create your own product lines or change their specifications, you can still use these where there is a functional need, perhaps at a lower price point or as an add-on for “behind-the- scenes” materials which don’t need to be beautiful to do their jobs. Split packs up, or make up your own – whatever you need to and however you want to do it, the flexibility is
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net February 2021
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