Your organization knows the Internet is the business medium of the 21st century. Hardly a day goes by without some references to how the Internet is changing the way businesses communicate and transact with one another. And the pace is only accelerating. 

Companies today frequently chart their strategic direction without having complete information. And when it comes to the Internet, the decision making process grows much more complex due to its rapid growth and relative immaturity as a platform for electronic commerce. With so much of your business' future riding on decisions being made today, doesn't it make sense to build a relationship with a company that has the necessary expertise? That will listen and respond to your needs? That has a passion for customer success?

Gillani's eSCM (Web Order Entry) best-in-class business to business "sell side" application serves the advanced order management and supply chain visibility needs of medium and large enterprises seeking to capture and process customer orders via the internet. Gillani's eSCM enables pre-registered customers to securely create / convert order templates for frequently purchased items, check the status of orders, initiate returns and view the order history. 

The advantages of deploying a best-in-class B2B "sell side" application, Gillani's eSCM include:§ Improved Customer and Supplier service by offering them 24X7 access to product information and ordering. 
- Reducing cost associated with the traditional ordering process such as catalog creation, printing, postage, customer service, order taking, etc. 
- Increased top-line revenue by increasing your customer base via the Internet.
- Increased velocity of your supply chain. 
- Improved bottom-line business performance and cost control.
- Modifiability by Design
- Ability to customize it according to your Customers needs. 

eSCM (for Enterprise Supply Chain Management) is a complete Web-based Order Management System for both brick & mortar as well as click & mortar systems. The application is written in Java and can be installed & implemented on Windows OR UNIX based Web Servers and can run against Informix or Oracle databases.

The eSCM comprises of Quote Management, Order Entry, Order Status Information, Return Material Management & Customer Service Management. The business processes for this application are tightly linked to the iDistribute v8.1 (complete end-to-end Supply Chain Management Software) product.

Gillani's eSCM helps your company create a competitive advantage by facilitating offering buyers "real-time" access to mission critical information such as inventory availability across multiple warehouses, customer specific pricing, freight rates and order status that results in easier order capture and better informed decisions being made.

iDistribute Order Management module offers manual & web-driven order entry and management with real-time access inventory availability and order status information. Control of customer profiling and order experience, management of complex contractual relationships, special customer order provisions, specialty return orders, value-add processing and "preferred customer" product reservations. Also provisions for customer-specific catalogs, complex orders with multiple shipping destinations, multiple ship date and multiple sourcing options.
 
Customer service levels that were acceptable five years ago are not acceptable today. Customers want products delivered where and when they need them and packaged the way they want. Nowhere are customers' expectations higher than in the order management area. Consequently, your order management system should be a strategic tool for providing better customer service. Better customer service makes you more competitive.

To provide excellent customer service, your order processing system needs to: 
- Shorten order cycle time: Time is often more critical to the customer than cost and other customer-satisfaction issues. If two sources offer the same product for nearly the same price, the one that offers the fastest delivery time gets the order. In more and more situations, customers give orders to the higher-priced vendor if that vendor can provide and earlier delivery. 

- Increase order fill rates: Whenever a product is not in stock you risk losing the sale of the backordered item, or sale of the entire order. The need to have a high order fill rate, however, must be balanced against higher inventory costs. 

- Provide complete and accurate order information: How easily can you answer a customer's question about the status of an order or shipment? How often must you refer to paper records before responding to the customer? Competitive customer service means answering questions quickly and accurately. 

- Meet the special needs of your best customers: Do you derive a large share of your sales from a small group of customers? What do you do to retain these larger and more profitable costumers? Special customers require a higher level of service, which means higher order fill rates, special order handling, faster deliveries, and special pricing. Special customers may require some "value-add" activity to support the order. Your order processing system must be able to treat special customers differently. 

- Offer flexibility in design:

iDistribute’s Order Management can help you improve customer service and be more competitive. It can shorten your order cycles, increase order fill rates without simply increasing inventory levels, give you more online order and shipment information, and allow you to adapt services to fit the special needs of your special customers. It can improve your order processing operations immediately.

The key to iDistribute’s Order Management is flexibility. It is in the order processing area where you need to have the most flexibility. You can adapt Order Management to meet the special needs of your customers, key suppliers, and products. You can adapt Order Management to meet the special needs of a rapidly changing marketplace.

iDistribute Purchasing application is an automated Purchasing system. This closed loop application fully automates the Purchase order creation, online approval and the electronic transmission to the suppliers e.g. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). It also enables an organization to track the Order in its various stages, manage optimum inventory levels and also manage payment to the suppliers. This results in a faster and more accurate process reducing the bottlenecks, delays and high overhead costs usually associated with the Purchasing processes.

The iDistribute Purchasing application is fully integrated with the other iDistribute applications like the Order management, Inventory management, Accounts payable and Advanced Planning and Replenishment.

iDistribute Purchasing features include:

• Automated or Manual Purchase Order creation
• Online tracking and Approval of the documents
• Electronic transfer of orders to vendors using EDI.
• Vendor Catalog maintenance

iDistribute Inventory Management captures and tracks an extensive amount of information about each item that is handled by the Enterprise and ensures the information is kept current and accurate. Item information includes item costing, movement history, current stock and backorder quantities, storage characteristics, aliases, lot and serial controls, and other information needed for each item. Audit processes available to assist in maintaining the accuracy of the inventory.

This module also provides a good level of inventory tracking that comprise of the following:

• Planning
• Packing
• Shipping
• Re-warehousing
• RF Controls

The iDistribute Inventory Management also provides multiple inventory costing options, item interchangeability, flexible codes and descriptions, default value settings that save tons of time during data entry.

Managing inventory levels intelligently and effectively is a key element in any organization's bottom line. The purpose of Replenishment is to find the correct balance between superior customer service, minimized inventory investment, and resource constraints such as workload and storage capabilities. Inventory levels that are too low decrease sales by causing customers to go elsewhere, and inventory levels that are too high erode profits. Consequently, the focus of the Replenishment module is to answer two simple questions with the best possible values:

· How much should I order?
· When should I order it?

To accomplish this, the data collection and math routines in the Replenishment module calculate two critical numbers: the item’s order point (OP) and high point (HP) as well as many supporting and associated values, such as the item’s usage forecast, average replenishment lead time, and excess point. You can allow the module to automatically calculate these numbers, or you can manually override values whenever necessary.

Replenishment uses information from the Purchasing, Order Entry, and Inventory Management modules to calculate stock replenishment orders, minimizing duplication of data entry and incorporating ongoing transaction data into the replenishment calculations.

iDistribute Advanced Planning and Replenishment application is designed to help an organization strategically lower inventory costs while maintaining an excellent customer service. The Advanced Planning and Replenishment application allows distribution firms to effectively track, manage and forecast demand usage patterns and seamlessly integrate those patterns into a flexible and predictable purchasing strategy.

The Advanced Planning and Replenishment application helps optimize inventory levels and therefore give a higher order fill rate. 

The iDistribute Advanced Planning and Replenishment features include 

• Powerful tools for Demand Forecasting

• Demand Management

• Flexibility to tune the system

• Sophisticated Analysis capabilities 

• Generation of Recommended to buy orders 

• Lead Time management

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Marketing Campaign is a module that works with the other iDistribute™ modules to aid in the planning, implementation, and tracking of a company’s sales and marketing efforts. Marketing Campaign is designed to assist companies in their efforts to:

- Increase sales revenue
- Promote products, both new and existing
- Penetrate new market areas
- Promote customer retention
- Increase customer satisfaction


How Marketing Campaign Works
Marketing Campaign helps companies meet these goals by allowing them to systematically target and track the discounts, giveaways, and promotions that they use to achieve their marketing goals. Marketing Campaign uses two main types of actions to carry out the campaigns that users create:

- Discounts
- Informational messages

Marketing Campaign allows you to execute various types of discounts on your products, including discounts on selected items, discounts on all items, tiered discounts based on quantities ordered, buy-one-get-one-free, free items, and more.
You can create campaigns that relay informational messages to your staff, prompting them to perform specified marketing-related tasks for orders that meet the conditions you specify. For example, you can direct the system to send messages to order-entry staff, pickers, or packers; the message may prompt them to include marketing items (catalogs, flyers, stickers, etc.) with the order, or to inform the customer of new products and promotions.

Because Marketing Campaign is an optional module, the features and tasks specific to Marketing Campaign are not covered in other iDistribute documentation.

iDistribute applications are controlled at three levels: module, program, and event. The key to setting up a quality security system depends on your understanding of these levels and how they relate to each other. Security is based on a hierarchy. Your security system is divided into three levels of users: individual, group, and default. On a fundamental level, security is a catalog of permissions granted to individuals or groups of individuals for specific tasks. 

The audit tracking feature to monitor selected user activity by date, time, and user. With audit tracking, selected user actions are recorded in an audit table, which stores information including date, time, user, and action performed. You can use these audit records to generate reports and locate specific transactions. You can determine which actions you want to audit, how often you want to generate audit reports, and how often to purge audit records. Audit tracking is available for all modules.

The audit facility does not reside within the modules themselves, but within the underlying database engine. The audit facility uses database "triggers" to create its audit records. When you define which actions you want to audit, you are attaching one of these triggers to the database table that contains the selected column. When activity occurs that affects an audited column in the table, the database is updated and the trigger is "fired," which records the activity in the audit table. For example, if you want to audit the addition of a customer record, you would create a trigger attached to the strcustr table that would fire whenever a record is added to the table. The audit record includes all pertinent details of the activity, including the type of action taken, the user who performed the action, the time and date of the action, the column affected, and both the old and new values in the column.

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