News in the Channel - October 2022

SOFTWARE

a need to have really strong analysis reports and business insights included, as standard, within the back-office reporting suite that facilitate operational efficiency,” he says. “For example, slow moving stock, what is tying up capital and valuable warehouse space, as well as what factors are potentially impacting the cost to serve.” Exciting times Along with merging the businesses and developing new products, Ian and Terry are focused on growing customer numbers. While Ian admits that economic circumstances have meant that dealers have held back on making big decisions, he hopes that the merger with Foresight and addition of their products will encourage dealers to make the switch to Prima. “We reinvest 40% of our turnover directly into product development. It is a big investment and dealers are really starting to see the fruits of this with the frequent, customer-led enhancements to the product,” says Ian. “Having worked with Terry, I knew that he was the very best person to deliver something special for our customers. We are delighted to have come to this arrangement with Terry. “Prima Software now provides a feature-rich cloud ERP system, fully integrated e-commerce platform, an expansive marketplace data provision, and now, with Foresight on board, we aim to have the very best reporting suite. It really is exciting times for us and more importantly, our customers.”

“The dealers need to be at the centre.” BI covers a range of areas, but for many dealers, the priority is often on information they need to react to. “Simple things that they need to be aware of that can be brought to their attention quickly, and without too much noise so they can react and respond,” explains Terry. “For me, it is about dealers looking at the bigger picture and applying their limited amount of resources to what they can do and get the most benefit from.” One feature that has recently been introduced is Targets, which gives users the ability to target just about anything within the business. “A popular feature targets an account manager or rep’s targets for a month and allows the user to constantly monitor how account managers are doing against those targets in real time. It sounds simple, but no other dealer system that we know of is doing that. “There is so much that can be done with BI that is relatively easy, but I don’t see many dealers doing it. We put this information in front of them and it is there if they need it. They can see what all the customers have bought, or which haven’t been active this month. Those are the sort of things that make a big difference. “I have lived the dealer lifestyle and sometimes you get so bogged down in running the business you don’t notice these things. “I try to drive an emotional response with the BI I provide. I write reports and try to think of it from the end user point of view and put an emotional response in; for example, these are your new accounts that have gone dead. It creates an emotive thought – I have put all this work in to get that new account and I have now lost it. All of these insights needs to drive behaviour – if you have all this information and do nothing with it, you might as well not bother with it. If my report doesn’t drive behaviour, it isn’t written properly.” Ian adds that Prima is also working on a new BI solution to replace its incumbent reporting system. “PrimaVantage will always be a premium bolt-on service because it drives growth, but there is also

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