With the acceleration of the integration of the global economy, competition in the food market has become increasingly intensive and has exhibited new characteristics. Due to the ever-intensifying low-cost competition, the food industry has ushered in an era of meager profit. To enhance the brand and to manage quality are no longer sufficient for enterprises to achieve success. A great leap forward from reduced cost alone to reduced cost bolstered by scientific management and all-round customer service has become the new requirement.
The central factory or warehouse and the chain store are the two major forms of enterprise organization within the food industry. Many food enterprises own both divisions while others focus simply on chain stores.
Retail is crucial to the food industry chain. It involves the following features:
Pricing for one product may vary according to different customer patterns, distribution channels, regions, sales forms and sales quantities. Price adjustments for new lines and in-season products are made for different customers.
Different price strategies for seasonal variations in price, promotions, products and product mix, etc. lead to mistakes if handled manually.
Most chain stores apply manual or single POS management to transfer data (e.g. products information, sales figures, etc.) to headquarters by fax, email or handwritten documents. The headquarters then has to collect the data, which further hinders efficiency.
The headquarters’ promotion schemes and latest news fail to reach retailers with quickness and accuracy and consequently impede promotion implementation and information transfer.
Failure to share information and do in-time data analysis affects the management’s decisions.
Multiple sales modes demand distinction among cash sales, coupon sales, credit repayment and VIP customer management.
Food items with expiry dates require date management.
Based upon an understanding of chain distribution and upon years of experience in distribution industry implementations, MTC food chain industry solution is an SAP Business One integration which is tailored to solve the management pain points of food retailing and distribution. It establishes a “short, even and swift” information management system for food enterprises.
Uniformity of basic information (including product and price information, etc.): Product’s basic price information is maintained by the headquarters and available for download by chain stores so as to ensure the uniformity and completeness of basic data.
Flexible price strategy: The system manages to work out flexible price strategies—including seasonal price variations, product portfolios, product discounts, discounts for single products and for entire orders, free gifts with minimum purchases, etc. Chain stores can download basic information and price strategy in real time. The system thus is able to calculate prices automatically and correctly at the time of sale and reduce human error.
Prompt and correct data transfer: Computerized cash registers in chain stores ensure quick and accurate sales statistics. Chain stores refer to the system to confirm product purchasing and distribution as well as to upload sales data. Factories can get chain stores’ purchasing information and discover goods’ distribution discrepancies. Also can they get chain stores’ sales information and make prompt decisions. In addition, the system supports messages sent from the headquarters to chain stores and offers alerts for stores when they receive new messages.
Management of VIP customers or club members: The system supports VIP customers or club members management and records detailed interaction and purchase information for VIP customers along with corresponding reward points and points redemption.
Management of multiple terms of payment: Terms of payment comprise of coupons, cards, checks, credit cards, cash, etc. As for coupons, the system can redeem coupons via barcode scan.
Close integration with finance: MTC’s Chain Restaurant Solution ensures close integration of finance and business, automatic generation of financial documents, perfect integration of capital flow, logistics and information flow.
Management of storage life: The system automatically delivers warnings of upcoming expiry dates for staff to handle.
Easy operation: The operation is easy to handle especially for chain store staff, e.g. the input content includes price, mnemonic code, material code, and scanning barcode. Templates can be customized while inputting documents. Only small alternations thus are needed while selecting templates during information inputs.
Data analysis and decision: Statistics, data analyses and illustrations allow the management to make scientific decisions, analyze sales conditions and determine the profitability of each store. The dashboard-like dynamic analysis report allows the management to know and master needed information with flexibility and comprehensiveness.
Flexible development tool: To use SAP’s SDK tool can develop additional functions and modules which allow further branching out and extension.
By using SAP Business One Chain Restaurant Solution, you will get the following benefits:
Build an information management platform for enterprises to standardize business processes, enhance the capacity of coordination and overall work efficiency, optimize and balance the process of supply chain and make the management mode replicable.
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