Published in:

Water & Beverages

Author accnuadmin

Published on: August 31, 2023

During our numerous hours of discovery sessions with owners and decision-makers of Water & beverage companies, we have noticed many challenges and pain points in their industry with their current software.

Some of the challenges and pain points are :

Production planning is difficult and causes either excess stock or less stock.
Setting the Bill of Material right and getting the respective raw material procurement based on the production usage is also quite challenging.
After completion of production, in case of any quality failure, keeping the water/beverages in multiple statuses is very challenging.
Keeping them separate in the system as well as physically is very difficult and no clue of what is the inventory of good inventory vs what is the total inventory of QC Fail.
For production keeping the required empty bottles/containers is very difficult and most of the time we end up with fewer empty bottles for production feeding hence production is not prepared as per the demand.
Order booking for 800+ customers is a very time-consuming process and though they have a team of 2-3 people to book orders most of the time they miss orders due to the phone getting continuously busy.
When they do have 5-6 different types of products like 500 ml, 1000 ml pet bottles, 25L containers, etc., sometimes the order management team enters customers’ orders wrongly with the wrong products, and 6-8% is converted as returns/cash refunds.
In this segment delivery of product on time is very difficult. Where customers are scattered across all the areas, managing vehicles to all the areas and delivering them is so complicated.
Many of the times driver confirms he has delivered and the customer complains they did not receive it.
Collecting empty bottles from customers is quite impossible. No clue how many empty bottles are with the customer, how many are with the branch, and losing 10 Lakhs around only for empty bottles missing and procuring them back.
Another challenge is in the market competitors/fraud companies are making the same type of bottles with the same stickers and selling normal water without any quality and missing company credibility and brand value.
In case customer complains about water/soda, there is no proper mechanism to capture their complaint and work towards the solution. Hence the retention rate is very high.
In case customers complain about one bottle, there is no reverse tracking mechanism to check which production batch the quality failed so that respective measures will be taken.
Payment collection, Most of the time drivers or collection agents collect money. Some of the agents are committing fraud by misusing funds and handing over less than collected.
No track of vehicles and drivers’ complete usage and there are no proper systems for using them optimally.
Many times in case customers ask for excess cans there is no clue how many extra cans given and what is the extra amount to be charged.
Every month’s first week itself is not sufficient to generate invoices for 1000+ customers. These invoices are happening through Excel by including all the deliveries of that month and many times causing issues.

Building Resellers/Partner ecosystems and managing them seamlessly is one of the key challenges.
The provision of getting orders from dealers/ distributors over the phone and entering into a system without mistakes is one of the tough tasks and takes numerous amount of time.
Managing inventory across all branches and knowing which item is fast-moving and which item is slow-moving. Most of the time unnecessary to invest money in slow-moving items.
Managing batch-wise barcodes, serial-wise barcodes for products and printing barcodes is a big challenge.
Customer-wise price setup and customer-wise barcode printing are also very difficult and using separate Excels and bartenders to generate those barcodes takes numerous hours.
Managing the inventory minimum in all sites/warehouses is very difficult and causes a loss of orders.
Handling multiple units of measure is a must and many of the companies are managing these conversions outside of the system.
Product delivery and generating e-Waybills from the Government portal takes a lot of time.
GSTIN reports also most of the time system units are different from GSTIN Units. Always downloading and changing the Units as per GSTIN report is very time-consuming.
Sales Reps booking orders over the field and informing the operations team over the phone is causing a lot of errors.
Sending emails / WhatsApp invoice documents manually is taking a lot of time.
Leads/Quotes managing in Excel, and not able to get good Pipeline reports with probability to plan cash flows.
At present all these communications are happening through WhatsApp and dealing with hundreds of customers is very challenging.
Answering customer’s calls about order status is quite complicated and takes a lot of resources, still, customers are not happy
Allotting area-wise customers to a sales rep and getting payment collections from customers is getting quite difficult because everyday printing A/R aging reports for the sales team is getting difficult.
Many customers skip the amounts buying time by simply skipping the payment and asking the SalesRep to send me the ledger etc
Sending Field Reps to the field and no clue about their daily activities and what all the areas covered. Not able to track the leads generated by Sales Reps in the field.
Booking advance amount per order/deposit for new customers is also a challenge. Booking at the order level and collecting the rest of the balance is quite complex.
Managing inventory along with delivery from multiple warehouses
Most of the time setting up multiple bill to and ship to addresses for one customer is quite challenging.
Supporting dropship functionality is getting very difficult.
For corporate customers sending their Blanket PO# in delivery and invoice is a very time-consuming process.

ACCNU Business Suite helps Water/beverage companies streamline their operations with ease by solving the pain points given above.

Track all the walk-ins
Generating leads/prospects
Creating customers on-fly
Booking Opportunities
Providing quotes then and there
Booking orders
Know the inventory of the product within a single click

Provision for B2B customers/dealers / Distributors to place orders through mobile
Provision for Sales Reps to place the order through the mobile app.
Provision to upload orders through CSV
Booking bulk orders and planning production based on sales orders
Provision to drivers for booking new orders

Provision to set up site level/warehouse level re-order qty
Based on the current inventory levels, provision to create production orders.
Production plan creation and building the inventory (Make-to-stock)
Production plan creation based on the Sales Order (Make-to-order)
Production wastage reports
Daily production planning and production report

Receiving the production outcome and QC check
Keep separate item status for QC Failed and after QC through provision to change item status from QC Failed to Good, if it is not usable, change status from QC Failed to Scrap.
Managing production batch# for every production order, and batch# tracking the entire system towards end-to-end processes, which helps ease tracking in case of any quality complaints

Provision to set up inventory re-order levels at the site level
Provision to set up inventory re-order levels at the company level
Automatic Purchase order creation based on the re-order levels
Automatic transfer order creation based on the re-order levels

Provision to branches place internal (Transfer) orders to plant
The plant will create internal order while sending empty cans to the Plant
Complete inventory status of Full cans / Empty Cans/ QC Failed / In-transit, etc
Total demands of transfer orders to the plant will become one of the key inputs for production planning.

Provision to create transfer order (Source location)
Issuing transfer orders along with E-waybill
Receiving Transfer order (Destination location)
Showing the inventory in transit (while in transit)
3 Step process helps complete accountability at both ends

Delivering the product from the site/warehouse
Collecting the Proof of Delivery from the Customer
Proof of Delivery instant integration to ERP
In case any payments are to be collected, those payments can be recorded in the mobile app
Instant e-Way Bill printing
360-degree visibility on end-to-end delivery until receiving the POD with customer sign.

Capturing Google pin for every customer
The system automatically generates trips based on area/time slot/average consumption
While generating a trip, the system gives the optimal path
Provision of loading cans as per trip and assign the trip to the driver

Mobile app helps drivers to go each customer and capture # bottles delivered and # empty cans collected
Provide provision to SKIP in case customer is not available
Provision to capture customer complaints
Provision to exchange/return the product to the customer

Provision for converting hundreds of deliveries to invoices with in single click
Sending bulk invoices Area wise, time slot-wise, and customer category-wise
Sending SMS/Whatsapp/Email alerts along with invoice PDF documents to all customers
Provision of sending instant e-invoice
Provision of sending payment gateway link in the invoice which helps for faster cash flow.

Delivery boy/ Cash collection agent / Field Rep can collect the amount from customers in various modes ( Cash / Check / UPI etc.)
Instant payment receipt creation in ERP
Tons of time-saving through automatic payment reconciliation

Managing inventory of raw materials and the usage report of raw material
Automatic barcodes printing
Managing multiple sites and multiple warehouses
Storing Raw materials at the Bin level
Physical inventory auditing provision
Managing Item Status and tracking Good/ Damaged products separately

Provision for Finance Facility and it helps to track customers purchasing with Finance option.
Provision of payment settlement and reports on settled/unsettled
Financial & Accounting statements
100% compliance – GST, TDS, TCS, Export invoices, etc.