Efficiency increases are often seen as the Holy Grail for distribution businesses. Finding ways to offer even minor boosts to efficiency numbers can have a direct and often substantial boost to the bottom line, especially for businesses in the Small to Medium-sized range (SMBs). Ironically, the search for greater efficiency can often bog companies down in long, unproductive meetings as they search for the secret to unlocking the problem of efficiency, not realizing there is no magic, one size fits all solution.
These businesses would instead be better served by targeting efficiency problem points within their current business setup. Tackling these, often minor, hurdles can add up to large gains in the long run. Instead of aiming for giant, company-wide changes, SMBs should prioritize finding tools to help tackle multiple, smaller inefficacies.
Luckily, a powerful tool to fight this very battle is within reach. By powering your business with Business Central (BC), SMBs can utilize the power of Microsoft CoPilot to identify and combat troublesome inefficiency sticking points without having to overhaul your entire operation. BC and CoPilot can be used in tandem to identify and hunt for inefficiencies inside the business, allowing for targeted “missions” to solve specific problems.
Going Hunting
Identifying potential problem points is the first step in the process, and experts recommend starting at the smallest possible level- the transaction. Whether it’s a purchase, sale, invoice or a return, every transaction a business documents will leave a digital trail that can be investigated for potential inefficiency.
Inefficiency hunters should look for patterns in the data:
- How many departments are having to touch each transaction?
- Can that number be pared down?
- How many follow-up emails are required?
Listing all the steps and handoffs to take a transaction from beginning to end is a good place to start. Allowing hunters to see every step shines a spotlight on redundant, needlessly complicated, or otherwise unneeded stops along the way. If an entire process seems needlessly complicated (such as the oft-reviled returns process), the best course of action may be consolidating the process into its own dedicated team or bubble, freeing up employees to focus on other roles while ensuring quality stays high in the affected areas.
Attacking the Problems
Once identified, inefficiencies can then be targeted and attacked by deploying solutions such as AI automation, streamlining processes, or advanced collaboration through dashboards and other team-centric platforms. While it takes time and effort to identify and combat each issue, businesses will see the effects almost immediately, with greater gains following in the long run.
Undertakings of this scale require clear vision and planning; they are not something that can be done effectively in limited or piece-by-piece fashion. Communication from leadership to implementation, and from implementation to end user needs to be clear and ongoing, with goals, metrics, and expected results clearly laid out, so day-to-day users understand the expectations and benefits of the new focus on efficiency. Businesses can provide their workers with all the best tools, however, results won’t follow unless the workforce understands how and why they are expected to use them.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Every department or sphere of business will face their own unique efficiency hurdles. While the tools to tackle them will be the same, the approach will vary from department to department. Some examples below will illustrate how BI and CoPilot help different departments tackle their efficiency issues in different ways, using the same tools.
Sales
One of the biggest frustrations for sales departments comes in the seemingly never-ending time-sink that is sales order entry. CoPilot is uniquely suited to solving this problem, offering its users curated suggestions from their inventory based on user-described needs, sparing them from the headache of scrolling page after page of inventory, looking for the correct item. This increases efficiency when it comes to speed of completion, and also increases order entry accuracy, minimizing item entry mistakes.
Workflow Automation
There is not a business on the planet that would not benefit from automating workflows. This is true for businesses of any size, in any industry. Business Central allows users to create written prompts that CoPilot can turn into automations, with no coding knowledge required. This frees up users to focus on other tasks and lowers the risk of user error being entered into the system. This powerful tool can be a boon for a number of departments, from fulfillment to ordering.
Finances
Dynamics 365 Business Central allows users to map incoming electronic invoices to outstanding purchase orders, saving countless hours of manual searching and attaching. The system uses rule-based matching to ensure accuracy, another safeguard against human error.
Bank Reconciliation
CoPilot can also help businesses handle the sometimes-tricky task of end-of-month and end-of-year reconciliation. CoPilot can assist in automatically matching bank statements that are uploaded to Business Central with the company’s transaction records. The AI can also suggest entries for transactions that were not automatically flagged by the system. CoPilot finds patterns in the data, such as similarly timed entries, or entries for the same amount, to help ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
Marketing
Efficiency can also take the form of having one person do the work of many, ideally without over-taxing their abilities and causing burnout. With departments such as marketing, which can often be seen as a “nice to have” instead of a “must have” for SMBs, CoPilot can provide a powerful option to utilize this form of efficiency. CoPilot helps users generate advertising copy, pulling existing product information such as item name, color, or material from the system. This copy can then be edited to fit the tone and function of the business, and features one-click export to Shopify. This intuitive AI-assist allows for one dedicated user to do the work of an entire team while avoiding over-working and burnout.
There is No Secret
As much as leaders may wish otherwise, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to finding and fixing efficiency issues. Rather than hitting a big, red “FIND INEFFICIENCY” button, businesses must practice a mindset dedicated to finding weaknesses in their existing systems, identifying how to increase the efficiency at those weak points, then implement those changes. Utilizing the powerful combination of Dynamics 365 Business Central and CoPilot, AI gives SMBs all the tools they need attack inefficiency head on.
