5 Tips to Optimize Your Distribution Revenues by Leveraging Business Intelligence

In an increasingly competitive environment, distribution plays an essential role for many companies. However, increasing revenues while reducing costs remains a major challenge. That’s where business intelligence comes in. By focusing on storage space management, demand forecasting and organizational profitability, companies can make strategic decisions to maximize revenues.

Distribution companies are constantly looking for ways to maximize the use of their storage space. The aim is to optimize the match between supply and demand. But what if the key was to have the goods in stock, even before the customer’s order is placed? Thanks to business intelligence, you can discover how to optimize your warehouse space by anticipating the right products to order, thus avoiding having blocked stock due to insufficient rotation. What’s more, this approach will enable you to identify the most profitable products.

A warehouse is expensive to maintain, and also to supervise, with the employees who work there. These huge costs can cut into your revenues, so plan ahead!
Conventional software generally operates on a “day-to-day” basis, so you can’t really anticipate supply and demand over the long term. Business intelligence, on the other hand, can take you to a higher, more predictive level, with profitability as the main objective.

Business intelligence makes it possible to analyze various elements in a predictive way to optimize distribution management. This includes analysis of sales history, profit margins for each product, future economic conditions, and optimal order quantities based on the size of each product. The constant aim is to meet demand while gaining a competitive edge by anticipating needs. By using this information, you can always stay one step ahead of your competitors.

The cost per square foot in Quebec is high, which can lead to constraints when you reach your warehouse’s maximum capacity. In such cases, you may be faced with the need to build or relocate to a new warehouse, with considerable costs and major implications.

So it’s worth asking whether it’s more expensive to save a square foot than to add one. This is a pertinent question, because investing in a business intelligence tool can enable you to save square footage more cost-effectively. Such a tool will help you take into account aspects that conventional software can’t manage. For example, it will help you place orders for products that take obsolescence into account. Indeed, some goods can deteriorate over time and lose their value, resulting in additional storage costs.

By investing in a business intelligence tool, you’ll be able to optimize your warehouse space by making more informed and cost-effective decisions, which can be less costly than physically adding square footage to your warehouse.

Implementing a business intelligence system is a fairly straightforward task, especially if you already have a conventional software system in place. The two systems can coexist harmoniously. In fact, it’s crucial to be able to connect your business intelligence software to your existing classic software, because the information generated by your business intelligence software must be based on existing data. In this way, the predictive software will be able to assimilate the information from your classic software, process it and suggest relevant actions accordingly.

The combination of these two software packages will enable you to achieve effective synergy, leveraging existing information to feed your business intelligence system and deliver more accurate, actionable results.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) plays an important role in today’s world, and can provide additional support for dashboard analysis and decision-making. Imagine a virtual assistant able to suggest improvements based on data analysis, taking into account the specific context of your business. An AI is devoid of reason, but it is capable of helping you with your strategy using the factual elements at its disposal.