Stock Taking
₹25
Due to the unorganised nature of general trade sales, most dealers of Indian FMCG companies do not have an inventory management software. As a result, most companies struggle to get period-end stock data (say weekly, monthly and quarterly) from the dealer, in the right format, at the right time. Unless of course, you are an FMCG giant like HUL or Dabur that can mandate dealers to use their proprietary software for good receiving, invoicing, managing returns and more.
What is the next best alternative if a dealer is not providing month-end, SKU-wise data?
Peri addresses this question by giving the control in the hands of company’s sales representatives. As a business process, a salesperson or supervisor or manger visits a dealer point at a regular interval for various purposes. Peri allows these users to do the physical stock audit of a dealer warehouse on the last day of the month or first day depending upon the invoicing policy. Because Peri is linked to the company’s depot using ERP integration, while doing stock audit, a user sees the opening stock and primary stock received by the dealer during the month. Once the user enters the closing stock, using the simple calculation (opening plus purchase minus closing minus in-transit equals secondary) the secdonary for the month is computed and sent for approval. To ensure accuracy, the area sales manager or regional sales manager of the company accompanies the frontliner on a sample basis and does the physical count himself.
As a result, on the last day of the month, a company get a 100% accurate account of the stock available in the market for retail distribution. This input is then sent to the production planning teams who create a detailed week by week production and dispatch plan for each depot of the company. The same data when visualised through Peri analytics shows gives alot of interesting insights to marketing teams in terms of the month’s retail offtake for each SKU, who can then plan trade promotions and sampling activities.
To summarise, Peri believes stock management should be done by every FCMG company, because it is the only wat to become a true consumer pull brand.