Steel & Tube Stainless (STS) import and distribute a large number of stainless steel products including fasteners, sheet, tube, pipe, plate and bar. The Company has diversified in recent years to now include a comprehensive welding products division and a fastening division.
STS, a classic distribution business for commodity based products, required a single integrated solution that would improve the customer experience, allow managers to make better, more informed decisions, and ensure that the right stocks were held in the appropriate locations within New Zealand.
Understanding the market sales price of a commodity product is largely dependent upon the experience of the customer service representatives. Their pricing decisions are based on having quality information provided in a timely manner. Dynamics AX is able to address this by providing a summary screen of an items history which includes all the appropriate information for the customer service representatives to make sensible informed decisions. Win/Loss analysis is used to position the correct sales price for the commodity in a ever changing and volatile market.
Another key critical success factor to this implementation is reservations of on-hand stock. New business processes drive disciplines into stock allocations that were otherwise lacking. STS have used Dynamics AX to achieve these robust processes which will ensure stock is allocated in real-time therefore enforcing good business practice and improve supply performance to the customer (On time and to specification KPI measure).
A common problem for wholesale distributors is the right balance between stock holding and cashflow. A combination of Dynamics AX’s advanced purchase materials planning (MRP) and the financial cashflow forecasting process keeps this equation in balance thus maximising return on stock investment dollars.
In summary, STS required a system with the appropriate flexibility to deliver true competitive advantage. The adaptive nature of Dynamics AX’s architecture provided rapid access to information and allowed the system to fit exactly to STS specific processes.
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