Swan has launched a new method which places stock information, images and product options as well as the ability to take customer special orders into the palms of your sales teams’ hands – an app for sales order processing.
Designed for retailers taking orders for bespoke items – furniture sets, carpets, sheds or greenhouses – creating a back to back order on a supplier or arranging home delivery, the solution replaces the traditional hand written sales docket with an easy to use, intuitive and unapologetically simple application. The app gives retailers the technological and functionality leap which will allow them to engage efficiently and effectively with customers on a one to one basis, all while having the relevant information at their fingertips.
This app has been specifically designed for the iPad following Apple best practices meaning that it runs locally on the device, utilising the best tools for the job and as a result is faster and smoother than a traditional web page or a remote desktop solution. It is also less bandwidth hungry and doesn’t rely on any 3rd party software so calls made on the central database are very quick allowing it to function seamlessly as an extension of Swan.
For sales staff, looking up stock, product or plant information is literally at a touch of button – with a mixture of drop down selections and word sensitive lookups, finding products could not be any easier. With tablet in hand, supplier catalogues, product options, images, companywide stock, pricing, post code lookup, customer account information and so much more is all available there and then, making the capturing of the order and customer details smooth and swift.
From the retailer’s perspective there is no longer the need to manually enter the sales docket – deciphering handwriting, verifying that the options are correct, infilling the missing information – reducing administration time as well as removing the margin for error when copying across details.
This all leads to great customer service as it is less likely that there will be any issues with their order which would result in a poor experience and possibly negative reviews of your business to their family and friends. With stock and on order information available in real time, this potentially decreases lead times on order fulfilment, delivering better stock sell through rates and improving profit margins.
Chris Marsden-Jones, Swan Business Development Director says “The new app is not only a new sales order processing front end to the Swan Retail ERP solution, but a technological lead forward in interacting with customers and converting their needs into orders. With sales staff spending more focused time with the customer, they are delivering a high level of customer service while sales conversion rates are improved, administration errors are minimised and business overheads are reduced”
