Sales Tracking Made Easy By Zed-Axis Date:   Tuesday , June 02, 2009 A certain mobile handset manufacturer uses a vast distribution channel comprising of National Distributors, Regional Distributors and Retailers, to sell its products to the customers. While operating its sales channel, the manufacturer faces an uphill task to keep track of the handset sales from the National distributor through the retail shops on a regular basis. To overcome these problems, a web-based application developed by Zed-Axis Technologies brings relief to the manufacturer by providing a reliable real-time, transparent access to its overall sales process. The customized application of Zed-Axis has been implemented across the manufacturer’s sales channel to track its secondary sales. There are three levels of sales that take place before the handset reaches the customer’s hand from the manufacturing facility. The manufacturer first distributes the handsets to its National Distributor, which in turn distributes them to the Regional distributors (RD’s) and the RD’s re-distribute these handsets to the Retailers who finally sell to the end customer. The application developed by the Zed-Axis concentrates on all the three stages and keeps the manufacturer updated about the overall sales by providing a variety of MIS derived by various filter options available. Reports could be based on the model numbers, region, category of the handsets etc. The application also helps the manufacturer to introduce new channel incentive schemes (Bundled, Category/Model Specific etc) at different levels, calculate the incentives and address channel payouts. This information empowers the manufacturer to take informed decisions related to product planning, price placement, target segment, and retail and service network expansions. All of this is possible only with real time entry of the sales and purchase data. “The challenge arises when channel partners don’t enter the data on time,” says Mayank Joshi, Associate Head (BD), Zed-Axis. When this happens, the manufacturer fails to get the real picture and the overall purpose of putting the application in place gets defeated. To overcome this, the manufacturer has decided on a monthly cut-off date, beyond which the sale of a defaulting partner is not accounted for the month. The partner does not qualify for the existing schemes, and is also deprived of any price protection. “The Zed Axis team is technically strong and has the domain expertise to develop and conceptualize sales solutions. They delivered a comprehensive sales tracking solution as per our unique requirements. We are happy with the solution and the response time of our partner Zed Axis,” says Rahul Goel, Head of Sales, Sony Ericsson, one of the manufacturers using this application. Currently, Zed-Axis has a couple of reputed handset manufacturers using its Sales tracking application to streamline their sales and some more are in talks to explore solutions for themselves. The application is not a readymade solution. We have the basic architecture in place which is highly customizable and scalable. Hence this solution is not limited to a particular industry vertical. “We would like to extend it to verticals like FMCG, Consumer durable, and Pharma which deal with a complex distribution and sales channel,” explains Joshi. Commenting on the future of this application Co-Founder Joydeep Kalra says “With the advent of 3G and improved mobility services, the future lies in providing a wide scale reach of this application through devices such as PDA’s and smart phones. That’s exactly where we are headed next. In the near future this application shall also have an option to integrate with financial accounting systems.” Apart from the sales tracking application, the 2000 founded company, also provides a variety of other mission critical business solutions (for details visit www.zed-axis.com). The company, headquartered in Delhi has a team of 70+ people. Commenting on its work culture, Kalra says, “We have an open work culture and the employees are considered as part of one family, to encourage them in their work, we have various reward & recognition programs in place.” The firm is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company, and a certified Microsoft Partner. Their competency lies in Custom Application Development, Mobility Solutions, Database Solutions, and Business Intelligence Solutions. The company is coming up with a Parallel business model providing Software as a Service (SaaS) to scale up market penetration. In addition, we have recently ventured into a dedicated B2B platform called ZedAxisGlobal (www.zedaxisglobal.com) which caters to the various outsourcing needs of mid segment overseas software companies. Next time you are being asked for Real-time Sales Data, don’t get embarrassed! Get in touch with Zed-Axis instead.