June 2021 ertonline.co.uk


Are your retail systems holding you back?


D Calculus Software Solutions offers highly efficient systems to help retailers run


espite retail stores being open again, many consumers will continue to use the Internet more for research before they go into


shops, as well as purely shopping online. It has pushed us forward 10 years down the path we were already heading. Electrical retailers have coped remarkably well


with the changes in consumer behaviour. We give them access to a lot of technological solutions; our mobile apps and delivery routing solutions save them a lot of manual work, and this in turn helps them to remain competitive against the big nationals. One big challenge in the past year has been stock


availability. The real-time updates from suppliers into retailers’ EPOS systems has been a big time saver, rather than them needing to constantly check stock manually. Our NCompass Advanced Retail software talks to


suppliers to check the availability of products and then makes that information available to the retailer and their customers, both in store and on their website. The system updates stock information multiple times per day, and as well as using this to inform customers, our websites also allow delivery dates to be booked based upon these timescales with real-time lookup back to the in-store diaries.


As customer orders come in for products, our


system can automatically place orders with suppliers – rather than the retailer doing this manually. When the stock comes in, if delivery hasn’t been


pre-booked, NCompass (above) will contact the customer by text to let them know their goods have arrived so they can arrange delivery. The retailer can view onscreen diaries and select a preferred date and van, or they can use our more advanced features to let the system suggest this for them. In addition to handling the delivery address with


rules to allow different areas to be covered on different days, this also takes into account the skills the van driver will need to handle each delivery – an order with a gas installation will require certain qualifications. On top of this, to help nudge


bookings towards the days which are most economical for the retailer, the diary is also presented in a colour-coded list – dates shown in green highlight the more favourable and eco-friendly options, and blue dates are still an option but not as efficient for the business. Once all the deliveries are


booked, up comes the routing system. This will look at each day’s deliveries for each vehicle and put them into an optimised route using calculations from Google to estimate travel times and locations.


crucial aspects of their business – such as stock ordering and product delivery. And there’s a new version of the NCompass Mobile app software coming soon, as the company’s Director, Rupert Woolger, explains.


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The system will also analyse the type of delivery


it is – wall-mounting a television or simply dropping one off, for example – and work out how long each delivery will take. This is all combined so that on the day itself each customer receives a delivery time window by text message. The van drivers use our NCompass Mobile 10


app (below left), which gives them their list of deliveries for the day. As they travel to each job, automatic text messages keep customers informed, and the retailer has a real-time display of the progress of each van. The system tracks the van using GPS and keeps a record of how long they spend travelling and on-site with each customer, which helps analyse profitability. If there are any hold-ups, the app will alert the retailer that some deliveries could be late, allowing pre-emptive contact to be made with their customers. As so many of us are used to nowadays, at the


end of the delivery, the driver will take a photograph as proof of delivery, and of course there is also the option for a signature on the phone screen. Launching next month is our new version of the


app, NCompass Mobile 11. Amongst various updates, one new feature is the product checklist – when products are taken off the van, their barcodes are scanned and checked off the list, ensuring the correct item is delivered. Coupled with our warehousing systems, this gives a complete courier- style audit trail of every item of stock throughout the entire business.


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