For business owners in any industry, it can often feel like the manufacturing and sales departments of your company are locked in a constant battle. The age-old conflict between demand and capacity can cause major headaches for both parties, resulting in missed sales, unfulfilled orders, a poor customer experience for your target market and reputational fallout as a result.
Fortunately, however, there is a way for marketing and manufacturing to coexist in harmony. The 21st century has brought with it a raft of technological marvels, many of which seem to be springing up anew with each passing day. By leveraging the power of technology to unite these two disparate arms of your business, you can finally square the circle between manufacturing and sales and ensure your whole company is pulling in the same direction.
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Why unity matters
Before you go about dovetailing your sales and manufacturing efforts, it’s important to understand why such a union matters. Well, first and foremost, a synchronised approach to the back-end and front-end of your business operations will ensure you always have enough products in stock – and a strong enough supply of raw materials to replenish them when they run low – to meet demand.
This is important for not only meeting orders and satisfying your customers, but also when dealing with issues on those sales that have already been made. Consider, for example, the importance of batch manufacturing. If you receive feedback from a customer that a product is faulty or out of date, you need to be able to trace that sale all the way back to the factory floor, so that you can recall all of the other items in the same batch and avoid any further reputational damage.
As such, an integrated approach to all aspects of your business – encompassing both manufacturing and sales – is key to not only ensuring you have enough products to keep your customers happy, but also in maintaining an impeccable standard among those product lines, as well.
Appropriate tech solutions
The best way to achieve such a feat is to identify the right technological solution and implement it across all aspects of your business. This should include all practical and logistical considerations faced by your factory floor, from inventory management for batch production all the way through to sales tracking and updating.
As a software solution that has been dreamt up by manufacturers and aimed specifically at the manufacturing market, Katana has the edge of insider knowledge. Its developers are privy to the key challenges facing those working in the manufacturing industry, which is why their platform has been engineered to meet all of the needs of a bustling business from both a manufacturing and a sales perspective.
With the ability to itemise and inventory every product and raw material you have in your warehouse, then automatically match those numbers to sales as and when they come through your pipeline, you’ll stay on top of the demand/capacity dilemma once and for all. In this way, the arduous process of uniting the first stage of your business operations with the last is turned into mere child’s play, equipping your company with the tools it needs to achieve the success it deserves.
