Boost Business Performance With the Power of Data

Today’s businesses collect an unprecedented amount of data, yet many organizations find that their data is siloed or otherwise disjointed, which makes it challenging to analyze and interpret. Enter data intelligence, a process that uses AI to extract valuable insights from massive datasets. 

For distributors and product-centric companies, integrating advanced data analysis tools with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems represents the best way to embrace data intelligence. For users of Microsoft and Acumatica ERP products, Cavallo’s Order Intelligence Platform (and its Profit Analytics™ function) represents the most robust out-of-the-box solutions to make implementing data intelligence practices accessible, easy, and realistic.

The Challenges of Order Management 

Effective order management is the backbone of any successful distribution business. However, handling things flawlessly can prove elusive due to the sheer number of moving parts in the modern supply chain. 

Order management is difficult by nature, largely due to the following:

Complex Processes

Order management involves juggling three primary objectives, which are often at odds with one another. Modern consumers expect their orders to be delivered with speed and accuracy, and they want reasonable (if not free) shipping. 

Processing orders at the speed of light is great in theory but can quickly become a recipe for increased costs and risk of errors, especially when a business heavily relies on manual processes. These make matters worse by hindering a company’s ability to meet consumer expectations, and a lack of automation makes scaling operations to handle increased order volumes just as challenging. Integrating redundancies to prevent potential errors can slow down picking and packing processes, which is a conundrum that most distributors face.

An order management system (OMS) with automation capabilities can alleviate these issues by streamlining workflows and reducing errors. Automation enables real-time order tracking and precise inventory management. However, the introduction of an OMS can lead to data segmentation. 

Order Intelligence bridges the gaps within your ERP and OMS solutions, ensuring your company can obtain holistic insights across the order process.

Margin Leakage

Margin leakage refers to the gradual erosion of profit margins due to inefficiencies in sales and order fulfillment processes. Some common contributors to the issue include unregulated discounting practices and overlooked additional costs, such as shipping and handling fees. For example, sales teams may offer frequent unauthorized discounts to close deals, which inadvertently reduces a company’s profitability over time.

Traditional wholesale and distribution analytics solutions simply fail to provide the granular insights necessary to identify and stop margin leakage. The result is a slow bleed that drains companies’ profits over months and years. 

Profit Analytics™ allows your business to pinpoint the source of margin leakage and fix the issue before it drastically impacts your bottom line. You can work through your data using various filters and pre-built visualization tools to determine how to improve your profitability. 

Limited Profit Visibility

A lack of profit visibility occurs when businesses lack detailed insights into the costs and revenue associated with individual orders. Fragmented systems and insufficient analytical tools are often to blame.

Without granular visibility, companies may process orders without understanding their true profitability (or lack thereof), which can lead to fulfilling orders that incur losses. These scenarios are common in complex operations where costs vary significantly across products or regions. 

Your business can address these challenges by integrating comprehensive analytics into the order management system, achieving product-level profit insights that allow your business to adjust pricing strategies accordingly.  

Transforming Raw Data Into Action 

Data intelligence refers to the process of transforming raw data into actionable insights that inform your decision-making processes. The first step in the process involves collecting data from a variety of high-quality sources and applying advanced analytics to uncover the patterns and trends within. 

Analyzing data at scale requires the use of AI tools. Cutting-edge tools streamline several key processes, including collection, integration, cleaning, analysis, and visualization. 

During the final stage, the data is transformed into easy-to-digest visuals that you can share with your team and use to guide decision-making. Ultimately, data intelligence practices represent the next progression in analytics, as they allow your organization to tap into the full array of information it collects. 

Smart Data Utilization for Distributors 

Cavallo’s AI-powered platform is designed to drive flawless orders that maximize profits. It systematically identifies profit leaks before they erode your margins and integrates with leading ERPs to provide business leaders with real-time, actionable insights. 

Adopters of Order Intelligence have experienced substantial reductions in their labor costs. By eliminating order errors, users can improve gross margins and drive business growth at scale, leading to: 

• 2-10x increase in pre-tax profits
• 50% improvement in per-employee revenue
• 300 basis point gross margin increase

Seamlessly Integrate with Industry-Leading ERPs

Order Intelligence solutions for distributors, including Profit Analytics™, support several Microsoft ERP platforms, including Dynamics GP, Dynamics 365 BC, and 365 F&O (also known as F&SCM). Cavallo provides integration support among these solutions to promote a seamless transition and optimized return on investment (ROI). 

Additionally, Cavallo launched Order Intelligence for Acumatica at the end of 2024, allowing Acumatica users to harness billions of historical data points and leverage the same out-of-the-box analytics tools as Microsoft ERP users. This move enables support for a broader customer base and helps Acumatica’s extensive array of wholesale and distribution clients achieve flawless order management. 

Historical Data Gives Your Organization an Edge

Adopting the tools available in the Order Intelligence platform can give your business a definitive edge. They each promote true data-driven decision-making and put actionable insights at your fingertips, allowing you to achieve benefits such as: 

Enhanced Order Accuracy 

Order mistakes represent some of the most costly errors a distribution or wholesale facility can make. Customers are bound to be frustrated when their long-awaited packages arrive with the wrong items, and the company will be forced to initiate the costly reverse logistics process in response. To make matters worse, the customer may choose not to do business with that company again.

Advanced technologiesn analyze order data and identify potential errors before they occur. Increasing precision during order fulfillment can spare your business from costly reverse logistics workflows and promote a better customer experience, which is critical to long-term success. 

Increased Profits Through Optimized Margins  

Leaking profits on even a few of your most popular items can significantly impact your bottom line. Real-time insights into profit trends and sources of margin leakage enable you to resolve deficiencies before they hinder your company’s long-term growth.

Unlock the full potential of the data you are already collecting, and in turn, you can address areas where profits may be slipping and recapture lost revenue. 

Better Data Accessibility and Capabilities 

Business leaders require timely, relevant insights to guide their decision-making and seize fleeting opportunities. Using the full array of data stored on your ERP and OMS platforms drives decisions that align with the company’s strategic goals. 

Your company’s C-suite can explore customer behavior, demand, and product-level performance metrics to promote long-term organizational success. Capabilities such as these are immensely valuable in today’s rapidly changing market, as consumer preferences or product trends can shift with little warning.

The ability to explore granular data points provides your team with guidance on how best to achieve big-picture goals throughout the year. Business leaders can explore relevant data points, including the reason behind profit decline at the line-item level or broader metrics like customer churn. 

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction 

Improving the way you process and fulfill your orders will directly impact customer satisfaction. Today’s consumers expect to get their orders fast, and they all but demand to receive the correct order the first time. Even a single order error can negatively impact a customer’s loyalty toward a brand and result in costly consequences.

Enable your business to streamline every phase of order fulfillment by combining data from your ERP. You can find and fix inefficiencies that may be eroding customer satisfaction, ultimately resulting in faster delivery times and more accurate orders, which are great for business.

In the long term, good data hygiene also promotes better scalability and reduced labor costs. After freeing up critical resources and personnel, your business can reinvest in modernization efforts that enhance customer satisfaction. 

For example, you can explore regional distribution opportunities to cut down on shipping times or advanced order processing software that removes friction from checkout processes. 

Choose Cavallo for Your Data Utilization Strategy

Order Intelligence is a purpose-built solution for distributors and product-centric businesses. Thanks to its integration with Acumatica and Microsoft ERPs, it offers out-of-the-box functionality and a condensed time to value.  

Schedule a demo and begin embracing the tactics of advanced data intelligence today.