As they monitor signs of a potential economic downturn, wholesale distributors are looking for every edge they can get. From e-commerce and business process automation to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, a range of digital capabilities promises growth, collaborative experiences, and transformation.
But for many distributors, there is a common glitch in their innovation efforts: Customer and employee expectations often get in the way, placing unprecedented pressures on the business model.
The key to fulfilling the full potential of innovation is an experience that is attractive to customers, brand partners, and employees. Such value-added services may include light manufacturing and kitting, financing, risk audits, ad hoc virtual training, automated tracking of machine performance, third-party logistics provisioning, real-time demand prediction, and data monetization.
Running these experiences with agility, responsiveness, and quick results allows distributors to extend their business by differentiating new products and services in response to changing market dynamics. As many customers in the industry can attest, such success is best achieved with the SAP Model Company service for Wholesale Distribution.
What is SAP Model Company for Wholesale Distribution?
SAP Model Company for Wholesale Distribution is a foundational portfolio of prepackaged, ready-to-use, end-to-end reference solutions. It is designed to help distributors accelerate the innovation of their end-to-end business processes for sales and distribution, logistics execution, and reporting and analytics.
Based on SAP Best Practices packages and SAP S/4HANA, the service delivers best practices and industry standards that are proven, documented, and improved continuously. This knowledge addresses changing industry dynamics and business needs, such as scenarios for direct store delivery, condition-based contracting, and recycling administration.
To bring industry best practices and standards to life, SAP offers a set of accelerators; for example, configuration guides, test scripts, the SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit, templates for master data upload, and business content documentation. The SAP Cloud Appliance Library tool quickly deploys these resources to support knowledge-sharing and enablement activities, such as a handover session and an optional business process workshop.
For customers, the service is especially useful when creating a proof of concept for an implementation project or compelling organizational users to adopt new technology quickly. The show-and-tell approach of the service allows decision-makers and users to see firsthand how processes and technologies can support the needs of the distribution business – without additional customization. Additionally, the time and cost associated with innovation activities, such as blueprinting, design, planning, training, and knowledge transfer, are considerably lower.
Find Your Edge by Innovating Beyond Conventional Industry Boundaries
The wholesale distribution industry is reaching a point where breaking bulk and maintaining personal customer relationships is not enough to stay competitive. Businesses have no choice but to start incorporating intelligent technologies to scale their interactions, deliver value-added services, and ensure every order fulfills expectations.
This reality is why SAP offers SAP Model Company for Wholesale Distribution. Every day, SAP sees its distributors use the service to transform how they operate strategically. They are taking on significant opportunities and delivering experiences that matter to their customers and employees. What is more inspiring is their ability to fundamentally change how they stay competitive and sustain growth in every economic condition.
Stay in the conversation by following the SAP Services and Support on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Kristian Kauffmann is global head of Service Portfolio Management for Consumer Industries at SAP.
