The offering

ColumbusDistribution is more than just a warehouse management system. It can deliver visibility into your sales data, stock levels, and delivery schedules, giving you confidence in your ability to meet customer demands. ColumbusDistribution can help you:

  • Identify emerging customer behavior
  • Better predict future market trends
  • Keep your stock lean
  • Make smarter buying decisions and decrease costs
  • Negotiate better terms with suppliers.
  • Improve customer relationships.

ColumbusDistribution is designed to help you stay competitive by improving your ability to predict and respond to changes in end-customer demand. And with Columbus’ distribution sector know-how, you’re assured of a solution that’s more closely aligned with your business needs today and in the future.

Information Once

A single solution, ColumbusDistribution brings together your people, operations and suppliers together to help you manage the complexities of a global network. Built on proven Microsoft Dynamics ERP technology, you get a solution that can handle growth. And with a familiar user interface, your solution works with and like Microsoft tools such as Excel, enabling you easy access to powerful reporting capabilities. 

Warehouse Management & Distribution

Eliminating blind spots and eradicating wasted steps can have a major impact on your bottom line. The ColumbusDistribution solution builds on robust Microsoft Dynamics functionality to automate the materials handling process for distributors.

ColumbusDistribution helps streamline your business so you can meet the following requirements:

  • Run warehouse management systems (WMS) processes in paperless mode.
  • Reduce the number of wrong picks and deliveries
  • Improve traceability from start-to-finish
  • Manage order information by ASN and EDI
  • Provide warehouse workers with efficient tools
  • Focus on building best of breed WMS and distribution systems

By integrating with supplier and shipping systems, you can automate picking processes, which enables you to implement cross-docking and wave planning processes. ColumbusDistribution streamlines order management, receiving, stocking, replenishment, picking, and shipping. This functionality helps you focus on what keeps your business thriving- enhancing customer satisfaction with faster turnaround times and precise order fulfilment.

Accurate Planning and Forecasting

With global operations such as these, it's even more important that you have the technology necessary to input, update and view accurate data in a timely manner, so that you can have a complete picture of your operations, and make swift, profitable decisions – especially when things like deliveries go awry.

ColumbusDistribution helps streamline your supply chain, and provide you with the forecasting and scheduling capabilities necessary for efficient operations in a global environment. With these tools and more, we can also help you gain a complete, clear picture of all your business practices, so you can make better, faster, and more profitable decisions at any time.

Maximising Inventory Profit

Your inventory is your most valuable asset. Managing it properly is key to maintaining cash flow, ensuring positive customer service, and keeping operations running smoothly. If your product isn't moving, it's just dollars sitting on a shelf. For leveraged distributors, who've purchased inventory with a bank loan, it's even more important to turn over your inventory and maximise it as an asset.

It can be tempting for your buyers to overstock the warehouse for fear of running out. But if you've filled your stock locations with products your customers don't need (rather than the stock they do need), you'll miss valuable opportunities to make money and build customer loyalty.

ColumbusDistribution can give you better visibility into demand and delivery help you optimise your stock levels, manage your inventory, and make well-informed business decisions so you can sell more product and keep your customers happy. And that means greater competitiveness, and a better bottom line.

Streamlined Delivery Management

Complex delivery schedules and unpredictable arrival times are part and parcel of the distribution business. Yet, your customers want to know when their products will be delivered – and they want to know now. That means your sales office is calling your production facilities, and expecting accurate answers as soon as possible. Currently, it could take up to three days for the appropriate person to get the answers your customer is looking for. That means a lot of phone calls – and a lot anxious people.

With ColumbusDistribution, you can get the scheduling answers you need in seconds, rather than days. With ATP (Available to Promise) capabilities, sales subsidiaries can automatically receive scheduling insight as soon as they enter a sales order into the system. You can find everything you need to know, all on one screen. That way, the right people will know right away what date they can promise delivery.

Should a delivery be delayed, the sooner you know, the better. Because you need to communicate the change to both your external supplier, and your sales office (who will then need to explain the situation to your customer) real-time, accurate updates can enable you to make allowances for the delay. Our system gives you alerts the moment the sales orders are having problems, and will identify which orders are delayed and why. That way, you can avoid the cost of having to rush the product by expensive methods – and avoid the even greater cost of an unhappy customer.