Excellence doesn’t happen by chance.  

For distributors, excellence appears as efficient workflows transacting without nonvalue efforts, repeating best practices of standard work and purposefully managing inventory.  

It also means capturing human intelligence through best-in-class employee experiences, and creating memorable customer experiences that keep them sticky and coming back. 

But how can distributors meet that standard? They study their value streams by slowing them down to identify the areas where methods, materials and people are slowing their internal workflows and disrupting memorable customer experiences.  

Keep Solutions Rooted in Process, Not Functionality  

Plenty of technologies help distributors improve their workflows. Advancements in ERP software and warehouse management systems, artificial Intelligence and robotic assistance picking can be particularly attractive options. 

But new systems can be a burden, both cost-wise and in implementation. To make an upgrade effective, be strategic about where and how changes are applied. With the end in mind, ask what processes stand to gain the most with technological advancement.  

Avoid thinking about what departments will gain the most. Customers buy your processes, not internal functions. And profitably is linked to effective processes within departments.    

Whether you’re redesigning your warehouse or the internal processes within, technology upgrades will yield better results if you:  

• Slow your internal processes down and study where critical leverage points for improvement reside. 
• Calculate and calibrate time and dollar savings associated with targeted processes, and then prioritize the scale improvement benefits. 
• Implement technology upgrades in small segments and closely track user adoption and sentiment. Be careful not to run past the user community. 
• Only purchase what will be used. 

With any upgrade, process functionality comes first. If you choose a tool without fully understanding how it can impact your day-to-day operations, you risk ending up with something expensive and more capable than the organization can appreciate and benefit from.  

It’s also important to consider how many technology upgrades or new things are taking place at once. It can be tempting to immediately jump into large enterprise solutions that run right past your organization. It’s better to start small and add layers of complexity to the solution as the organization absorbs it.  

The objective is to grow into a solution without outrunning your business’s ability to consume it. 

How to Improve Workflow 

Distributors can improve workflow by keeping a narrow focus on what really matters to their business —  value streams with customer requirements first, and internal supporting processes second. 

Trying to make improvements to every element of the value stream can lead to organizational overwhelm and human capacity dilution. And having a divergent focus can prevent you from digging deep into the real issues and benefits, causing a heavy toll on available human capacity to implement such investments.  

Instead, examine and train yourself to see wasteful activities within your value streams and to identify areas where customer experience or operational performance is lacking.   

There are five key components of your enterprise value streams to compartmentalize. These five are good starting points for your improvement treasure hunt:  

1. Inventory: Is the right amount of inventory in the right place, with the ideal amount of inventory dollars? If not, what needs to occur?  
2. Order intake: Is there error-free intake that creates a memorable experience for the customer?  If not, what needs to improve?  
3. Consolidating orders: Are delivery and picking channels optimized? Are you spending the least amount of effort possible on picking and organizing orders? Where are you consuming too much effort? 
4. Delivery and shipping: Are deliveries quick, reliable and at optimal costs? What deliveries cost too much because of your organization? 
5. Returns: Do you have an efficient process for returning items to your inventory? Do buyers feel satisfied when they experience your return processes?  

Identifying Leverage Points  

After studying your value streams, consider what issues are leading to poor operational performance or unsatisfactory customer experiences and why.  

Within those compartmentalized value streams, there are seven potential reasons why issues can occur.  These reasons will rationalize where technology lifts could help improvement efforts. 

The most common “whys” affecting performance are:  

• Revenue constraints 
• Time and effort consumption 
• Conversion costs 
• Approval delays 
• Errors and rework 
• Duplication of effort or nonvalue activities 
• Unused data collection or efforts 

And the root of those “whys” often lies in the following:  

• Materials and information being poorly presented   
• Ineffective methods for completing work tasks and making decisions  
• People lacking capacity or capability  
• Inefficiencies with machines, facilities and money 

For example, maybe paper pick sheets are leading to errors in shipping and giving your business an unreliable delivery reputation. Or maybe an inefficient warehouse configuration means pickers spend too much effort searching for items, traveling unnecessary distances and leading to slower shipping consolidation and missed ship dates.  

Clearly identifying the problem and the source will help you select the right technology solution that best suits your operation. 

Digital Solutions for Distribution Center Optimization  

Once leverage points have been identified, then it’s time to look at technology solutions.  

Here are some proven, consumable technologies for optimization:  

Social media  

As distributors continue to move toward social media advertising, it’s important to be aware of social selling. Businesses can use social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to create user and customer influencers and open new revenue channels.  

Visual workflows 

Visual workflows are software that create a visual representation of an operation’s day-to-day transactions. They make it easier to see where inefficiencies, like approval delays, are postponing operations.  

Optical character recognition (OCR) 

Many distributors are still using hand-written forms throughout their business, which means that staff are still manually imputing information into a digital system.  

OCR helps automate some of that process by converting images of text into a machine-readable text format.  

With OCR, a picture of an order can be converted into text, and then the amount listed can be automatically uploaded into the order intake management system. It helps give both staff and digital systems easier access to data by taking information from an unstructured environment and putting it into a structured environment.   

Robotic process automation  

Software robots are another way to automate repetitive, labor-intensive processes.  

These robots can navigate digital workflow systems since they understand how to read screens and populate fields. Given a defined action, the robot will be able to extract data, input keystrokes or complete similar tasks.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) 

AI can be used to conduct inventory performance forecasting, and when demand is overlayed lay with supply chain provider performance, it will predict precisely when inventory orders should be placed.  

AI can also be used to examine historical data to simulate customer demands with past supply chain responsiveness. It predicts the likelihood that a demand will occur and the service ability of reaching the demand so that inventory levels can be adjusted.  

Forecasting simulations can lead to more strategic inventory purchases and getting your operation closer to optimal inventory levels. It also helps you mentally prepare to meet demand, increasing reliability.  

Digital assistants 

Digital assistants like Cortana, Siri and Alexa can help staff cut down on errors and places where they may be stalling. For example, staff can ask the digital assistant how to complete a task within the information systems or confirm the accuracy of specific data.  

Bots 

Online bots can help provide cognitive searching for websites so that customers can easily find what they need. They can also be used to provide a chat service to help answer customer questions or complete simple transactions.  

Rather than a series of hard-to-recall keystrokes, digital assistants do all the work and present answers, winning back time for you or your customer  

Traffic management and delivery 

Traffic management technology provides data on fleet performance, including driver performance, fuel efficiency and route efficiency. GPS tracking can also be used to better communicate with customers on the status of their orders.  

Mobile technologies  

Mobile technologies, like handheld devices, can help optimize the picking process. These devices can generate pick lists and relay instructions to pickers. They also provide real-time data on inventory and shipping and receiving transactions.  

Using them can help cut down on the errors, effort, time and potential bottlenecks associated with paper entries.