Retail & Distribution

A retail group with twenty branches usually knows its total stock value to the naira at the end of the year and very little about it in between. Each branch runs its own point-of-sale, transfers between branches are recorded on a delivery note and entered at the receiving end days later, and the head office view is a spreadsheet consolidated weekly at best. The consequences are ordinary and expensive: one branch stocks out on a line that another branch is discounting to clear, purchasing reorders against a total that is already wrong, and month-end stock variance of six or seven per cent is treated as a fact of life rather than a solvable problem.

Cash reconciliation is the second pressure and it has become harder rather than easier. A branch now takes money across a card terminal, several bank transfer channels, mobile money and cash, and the transfer notifications arrive with varying delay and varying reference quality. Matching that against point-of-sale takings by hand is a daily job that is always in arrears, so a shortfall is discovered a fortnight later when the trail is cold. Automated matching against bank statement feeds with a worked exception queue turns a fortnight into the same afternoon, which changes what is recoverable.

For distributors the pressure is the network itself. Hundreds of sub-distributors and retailers place orders by phone call and WhatsApp message to a sales representative, credit limits live in the representative’s head, and the manufacturer’s trade promotion cannot be verified as having reached the shelf. Sales-force data arrives late and is unreliable, so demand planning is guesswork. A distributor portal with order placement, enforced credit limits, delivery confirmation and visible promotion claims removes the ambiguity and, in our experience, is adopted quickly because it also pays the retailer’s claim faster.