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You’re caught in the middle of a tug-of-war.

On one side, the customers of your wholesale distribution business pull at you to deliver faster and reduce your margins. They may even expect you to have an e-commerce platform so they can buy conveniently online, just like consumers.   

Meanwhile, on the supply chain side, your vendors yank at your bottom line with higher costs and more complicated logistics as you grapple with managing global resources. To make matters worse, some suppliers are cutting you out of the value loop by selling directly to your customers. 

How are you supposed to sustain a growing business in the midst of all these pressures? 

That’s where Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software empowers small and medium-sized businesses like yours to respond efficiently, productively and at scale to business challenges. 

Your sales are flying, but profits are only limping along.

That’s not what you expected for your wholesale distribution business.

But with growth came mounting complexity:

• Thousands of SKUs quickly moving in and out of your various locations

• Daily headaches from your wide-ranging supply chain

• A non-stop balancing act in inventory management as you scramble to get customers what they need without choking your cash flow 

Moreover, competition is fierce and customers seem ready to switch their business at the slightest letdown in service. 

Fortunately, you’re well into your search for an ERP system.

That software’s capacity for centralizing data from all your business functions will give you complete visibility into your operation in real time. You’ll eliminate or automate processes and make better decisions faster based on real-time data. 

As you kick the tires on ERP systems, we want to help you get the most out of the one best suited to meet your distinct needs as a wholesale distributor. Here are 10 proven tips that do exactly that.

You’ve turned up the dial on getting more out of less.

Faced with inflation, competition and low margins, you’re optimizing your food and beverage (F&B) business from top to bottom.

Naturally, you’ve looked for technology to support your efforts. From research, you know that the right ERP system can take your optimization quest to a whole new level.

You know that ERPs can streamline or automate processes and give you real-time visibility into your operations so you can make data-driven decisions faster. 

You may not know, though, about these 10 tips on getting more out of your ERP system. We hope you’ll find them helpful! 

Managing data was a challenge for Alix Muller’s clients.                                                         

They owned small- and medium-sized businesses and came to Alix for help. In the mid-1990s, he had only recently launched his career as an accounting and finance professional. 

Little did his clients know that Alix also had a long-standing passion for information management systems. 

Inspired by the challenges his clients were facing, in 1999, Alix founded Commsoft Technologies, the operating company behind Fidelio Cloud ERP. 

Needless to say, ERP systems have come a very long way since.

Given Alix’s unique perspective as a financial professional and founder of a tech start-up, we asked him some questions that may be on the minds of business owners considering a digital transformation.

Rethink the way you operate: that’s the message the world is sending every business owner in the food and beverage (F&B) sector.

Like your competitors, you’re battling inflationary prices for raw materials, labour, and energy while striving to keep tight margins from shrinking further.

Meanwhile, your supply chain is disrupted regularly by natural and man-made disasters.

If the business seems less fun, it’s good to know that digital technology can help you address these challenges and support your goals for building a thriving business.

In the following discussion, we highlight five key ways CEOs are taking action in this disruptive environment. In all these courses of action, you’ll note that a digital transformation is a must.

These F&B companies took on the multifaceted challenges of digital transformation because it was the most cost-efficient way to meet their business goals.

Your growing business has a lot of moving parts — and that’s worrisome. Your grip on the business feels less sure. 

So you’re looking for a solution to stay on top of all this movement, especially in your warehouse operations, the foundation of your distribution or wholesale business. 

Perhaps you’re unclear about the differences between a Warehouse Management System (WMS) and an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. In your mind, they may be interchangeable. After all, they do share some of the same functions.

In this article, we’ll explain what WMS and ERP systems do, highlight their differences, and guide you through the questions that will help you evaluate which solution would be right for you.