ProSel Sales Automation for iPad

Overview

Since 1986, Ai2’s focus has been solving wholesaler/distributors’ remote order entry and communication problems. ProSel™, our new solution for the iPad, represents our entry into a new era in mobile computing. Mobile field sales professionals now have the ability to use a single application to manage their daily functions on the world’s most popular tablet.

At Ai2, we see the new ways to work on an iPad as being more valuable than the new ways to play.

Sales representatives for wholesale distributors need to place orders, write up returns, calculate pricing, browse an item catalog of 75,000 items, check on-hand inventory and make presentations to retail customers. They need to do this several times a day with speed and accuracy. They can’t make a phone call or send an email every time they need to look something up. There are many sales applications on the market, but very few on tablets and even fewer that can sync and manage a large amount of data quickly and accurately.

The main benefit of the syncing process: if a distributor changes a price on an item, discontinues a certain product line, or the state taxes increase, the salespeople in the field need to be informed as soon as possible. As each iPad in the field syncs on demand with the host, the sales rep is now armed with up-to-the-minute information.

Sales reps who carry laptops or handheld data terminals are often carrying a lot of paper material too. They carry promotional flyers, accounts receivable information or a book of bar codes to scan – all paper that ProSel eliminates by digitizing and automating the processes. This gives the rep faster access to materials and helps increase sales.

When a sales rep sends in an order with ProSel using a wi-fi or 3G connection, the order appears immediately at the distributor’s location. This saves a distributor a lot of time, eliminates costly errors and shortens the order-to-fulfillment cycle.

Sales reps in wholesale distribution are each responsible for dozens of customers. This rep needs an organized way to sift through a mountain of ever-changing data: price changes, inventory, accounts receivable information and marketing collateral. The more time a rep spends looking something up in a book, talking on the phone to the home office or performing administrative tasks, the less time he or she has to connect with the customer and strengthen the relationship.

Sales reps may be using old devices, old software or a hodgepodge of technology and paper to accomplish their myriad daily tasks. This requires a lot of time and effort by IT, sales and marketing departments to maintain, much of it done manually. The workers end up supporting the application, instead of the other way around.

What’s more, if a distributor prints and distributes a thousand flyers with a typo on them, they must either reprint the flyers or live with the typo. Making a correction to a PDF and disseminating it with one click is a lot easier than printing a thousand new flyers or manually correcting the error.

Replacing all the paper marketing and A/R materials benefits the environment and the company’s bottom line. ProSel is also friendly for retailer order entry, engendering customer loyalty and allowing a distributor to control the flow of information to customers.

ProSel is the culmination of 25 years of collaboration with some of the top minds in several segments of wholesale distribution. The speed with which ProSel can search, sort and sync tens of thousands of lines of data and images, using Ai2’s proprietary communication technology, is among its main strengths.

Benefits

ProSel is about taking complete control of every piece of information that’s disseminated to the field. Salespeople and customers see what sales and marketing officers want them to see, when they want them to see it. This helps distributors and wholesalers foster customer loyalty and manage the flow of information from their organization.

Navigating is easy as salespeople and customers move through the complete price book, the customer’s purchase history, order guides and your pricing.
Browse by a basic or detailed list with the option to attach images to each item.
Are there new specials? New items? Information different from yesterday? ProSel will sync on-demand with the home database as often as the user likes so salespeople can avoid emailing and calling the home office, saving time every day.
ProSel searches an item catalog of 75,000 items in seconds.
ProSel requires almost no training.
ProSel gives salespeople the ability to make an interactive multimedia presentation to their customers.
ProSel supports the display of .JPEG, .PNG, .PDF and .MOV files.
A promotional video from a manufacturer that salespeople are displaying directly to customers is a potential new revenue stream.
The application supports the addition of bar code scanning to speed up ordering.
Companies can eliminate the costly printing and time-consuming distribution of paper marketing materials.
Sync the database with the server as often as the user wishes and give real-time information to salespeople.
Users can take suggested orders based on inventory and par / reorder point.
Users can review customer history and add items to an order based on historical sales data.
Users can create a unique “never out” list per customer that can be reviewed and used to ensure the customer always has stock.
ProSel can notify customers of items arriving on future orders.
ProSel can force review of promotional items during each order.
The application supports the ability to print bar code labels/shelf tags (this requires an external mobile printer)
ProSel lets a user see and search reports.