Streamlining efficiency: Top 10 tips
Efficiency tips when using Autopart from MAM Software that also help protect margins
Published: 21 March, 2023
Many businesses are currently undergoing reviews to determine the best way to cut costs and maximise profitability in what is an uncertain economic landscape. Your ERP software is the driving force behind your business and there is no better time to ensure your software has the core values of protecting margins and driving sales.
Autopart is the versatile business management solution that seamlessly integrates your sales, stock management, account and reporting processes into one easy-to-use package. As well as many processes that are fundamental to a successful business, Autopart is filled with intuitive features that can streamline, digitise and maximise productivity in an economic climate where a smart business strategy is vital to success.
1. Maximise your margins – Diving into invoices, costs and trends through in-depth reporting gives you a clear view of your margins including where they are too low. In MAM’s Autopart system, this process is simple and all reports can be automated in the day end to ensure this important information gets to the right person so it can be acted upon efficiently.
2. The right stock at the right time – Analyse your part usages to ensure you are ordering the right amount of stock. Autopart recommends new minimum and maximum stock levels. These figures can be used to generate suggested purchase orders ensuring only the right amount of stock is ordered.
3. Money left on the shelf? – Slow – moving and unprofitable products can eat into your margins more than you think. Autopart can analyse sales trends across single or multi-site locations and adjust your stock levels accordingly. Leaving you with more profitable stock and less unnecessary purchases.
4. Extend your business and trade on line 24/7 – Having an online presence increases opportunity for sales. MAM Softwares ecommerce solutions allows you to receive all online orders immediately into your MAM business management system for onward processing. Once on the site, your customers can browse your product catalogue, search for products and add them to their basket. They will see their own prices (trade or retail), as well as product images, datasheets and the accurate availability of stock.
5. Control your pricing – The key to profitable sales is a pricing strategy that reflects your customers' varying pricing needs. Autopart can help you define and manage complex pricing models or run special offers tailored by item, product group, customer and/or date.
6. Source parts from your branches first – Companies with multiple branches can utilise Autopart’s stock levelling. This automated process analyses branch stock levels and sources parts from other branches where possible. Saving money on unnecessary purchase orders to suppliers.
7. Go paperless – Many businesses still rely on costly inefficient paper communications. If you're sending invoices, statements or promotional material by post, Autopart can save you money by communicating with your customers directly via email and SMS text messaging.
8. Increase your average order value – This is a great way to improve your profits from your existing customers. Autopart makes it easy for you to take advantage of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities by linking relevant products together for your staff to recommend at the point-of-sale.
9. Run promotions – Attract new customers, launch products, ensure customers feel like they are getting value for money or offload excess stock using sales promotions. Autopart makes this easy and simple to do using its sales promotions tool.
10. Reducing customer returns – Integrated into Autopart is Autocat- a widely recognised, industry-standard parts catalogue that lets you quickly find and compare components from a wide range of suppliers by matching parts to particular vehicles helping to ensure the right part first time.
To find out how Autopart can help your business more visit www.mamsoft.co.uk and request a demo.
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- Road of expansion
Formed in 1977 as J.A Thomas Fuel Injection Engineers, a purely diesel orientated workshop, the Thomas group have now grown into a business stocking over 100,000 parts from diesel injection components, auto electrics, petrol injection, air conditioning and OE filtration and fuel additive.
With over 250 years of combined workshop experience, Thomas Group sought a business management solution that could cope with all aspects of the business including an extensive e-commerce portfolio that includes Diesel Parts Direct (DPD), Delphi Parts store (DPS), Vehicle Parts Market (VPM); along with Amazon/Ebay integration and combine this knowledge and help unlock its full potential.
After trying other business management systems over many years, Thomas Group began discussions with MAM Software. Kevin O’Sullivan, Director of Thomas Group identified MAM Software to be synonymous with the automotive industry, buying groups and factoring. “We were down a blind alley with our current solution, we needed to have a technical discussion about what we wanted from our business management system, what could be achieved and where we want the company to be heading. That is where the discussion with Ben began.”
Ben Nicholls, Automotive Sales Manager met with Kevin and the other directors of Thomas Group to discuss the software available to them and the many benefits of being a customer of MAM Software. After exploring all options followed by a team visit to the MAM offices in Barnsley, Thomas Group decided that Autopart is the way forward for them.
Implementation
Autopart is the versatile business management software that seamlessly integrates sales, stock management, accounting and reporting processes in one easy-to-use package. Kevin added: “Autopart is what we needed, it was software that could do what other business management systems simply couldn’t. MAM’s workshop management tool QJI was also implemented, adding further capability to our diesel/garage workshops. We are now live on the system, absolutely everybody is very complimentary about the product, especially how quick and easy it is to use. Now we have become familiar with the essentials we have booked training to learn all the extra processes and reporting that can really help elevate our day-to-day activities.”
Kevin has put the success of the implementation down to a number of different factors: “I feel that things have gone so smoothly due to two great teams working together as a partnership to get the best out of our business and Autopart. Our team has really stepped up and performed and its great to see that if any of the team raised a query or potential issue, we have a single person from MAM who spoke to us and resolved the issue very quickly, supported by management in the background.”
Kevin commented that another huge positive was the Konnect customer conference held in Stratford-upon-Avon in early March. “This was a superb event with the opportunity to network with many MAM customers, attend technical seminars and book one-to-one technical sessions.”
Looking to the future, Kevin concluded: “We have a roadmap of where we need to go, and we need the right technology to do that. I’ve been speaking closely to Ben and Teccom ordering is something we will require. We are also interested in adding Autocat into our business to accommodate our parts cataloguing needs. Moving over to a new software is always going to have some problems, but the important part is having a team that can swiftly resolve these and that’s what MAM have achieved.”
Ben Nicholls added: “I was involved from the very beginning with Thomas Group so its great to see that they are now live and getting the most they can out of Autopart and MAM Software. It’s a great team down there who have some high aspirations of where they want to take the business. I’m confident that they can achieve this and Autopart has an essential role to play.”
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