Background :
Mr. Gopal of Palepu operates from their head-office on Moore Street. They have two branch offices: one at Tambaram and another at Ambattur. The head office is small but well-organised. Six data entry operators work in the office along with a very capable accountant and a manager, apart from Gopal himself. Palepu has a few employees manning the attached warehouse and for sorting out stocks for despatch. Palepu & Co has an army of salesmen making contact with individual chemists, taking down orders and ensuring delivery of stocks.

Key Concerns for Gopal :
1) Sustaining Long-term Market Advantage : Making sure that he offers a clearly differentiated service to his customers which will enable him to retain his customer base with an edge over competition. Gopal believes that given the dynamics in his industry, there are only two ways of retaining a customer: either by providing markedly more reliable and timely delivery of stocks against chemists' orders, or by offering his goods at a significant discount to their retailer price (not a good business practice). Therefore, the choice is only one and clear: the former.

2) Employee Efficiency and Operating Control : Improving efficiency of his staff members would enable him to grow his business more efficiently. He is constantly looking for growth opportunities, both through organic sources as well as through acquisition opportunities. In order to scale up his business, Gopal realised that his back-end controls on inventory, revenue and profitability have to be very strong and he has to create room to grow further by making his existing team more efficient.

3) Contribution to the Industry : Gopal has strong beliefs about the role of channel members in the pharmaceutical distribution trade. Apart from promoting various initiatives relating to development of the community pharmacist, he is also very technology savvy and aims to lead the way in promoting industry best practices. (He had introduced ordering on palmtop devices for his salesmen -as far as I recollect- about three years back.)

Key Business Improvements Achieved By Implementing Forum :
1) Streamlining Inter-Unit Transactions : One example:- With two new branches being set up, stocks had to be transferred to the branch offices for delivery to end-customers. Several hundred products could be transferred at a time. This used to be a tedious process till Forum™ was implemented.

This is how the process used to be in the pre-Forum™ days: First step in the exercise was to have the branch office estimate what stocks and how much they needed. This was a manual process in which the details were compiled and communicated to head office on phone. Head office would have the manager or accountant or Gopal himself scrutinise this vis-a-vis expected stock levels at the branch. After due validation / modification, the despatch details were prepared. Stocks were despatched along with a file copied on to two floppy disks (one for backup) containing the details of the stock transfer. The file would be uploaded from the floppy at the recipient branch to update stocks in the branch software.

With Forum™ , the process was dramatically streamlined. Head office can pre-configure the Stock Norm at the branch office based on current sales to ensure that Stock Requests are automatically generated when the branch office needs stocks. The branch office connects to the internet through a dial-up internet connection and at the click of a button, the details are received at the head office. (These details are pre-validated since the Request is automatically generated based on rules set by head office, therefore even a cursory review will do.) At the head office, the authorised person just needs to click on another button to generate the Stock Transfer Note. Stocks are accordingly shipped to the branch and a copy of the Stock Transfer Note is automatically sent back through the internet to the branch office. Based on this, the branch office can update its inventory records immediately at the click of a button.

What was a tedious process replete with manual intervention became rule-based, reliable and automatic. Significant employee time was saved and productivity improved.

2) Prompt, reliable MIS generation : Palepu had earlier faced contraints in handling his large volumes of business data in his earlier software. Typically, handling more than one month's data was not feasible and therefore, any MIS report that had to be generated for prior months required a laborious, elaborate process. With Forum™, scalability became immediately a non-issue. Forum™ operates on a superior and more scalable database and relevant reports are always just a button-click away.

On account of the large business volumes, reliability of operations and reporting was a key concern area for Gopal and his team. The first monthly closure of accounts after implementation said it all when Gopal's accountant, Rajeev called to thank the Forum™ team. Rajeev explained that with their earlier software, when they did their first month closure after implementation, the software had crashed and they subsequently spent two days trying to recover what they could. On the contrary with Forum™ , on their first month closure, they had closed books and had wound up the day at 6 in the evening!  

In addition to the areas explained above, with Forum™ , it is also possible to consolidate MIS reports from branch offices through the internet at a button click. Palepu & Co will significantly benefit by using this facility.

3) Significantly Improved Billing Efficiency : Gopal has his data entry operators take down orders from his field salesmen and / or customers on the phone. They type as they listen with their fingers flying over the keyboard. They need to know instantly what inventory is available and they give the salesman appropriate feedback to finalise the order. With several hundred invoices being generated everyday, this process has to be extremely fast and every improvement in billing efficiency could mean money earned for Palepu. Forum™ helped them achieve significant improvements in this regard.

Best Practices in Inventory