# Orders confirmed, delivered and collected without the chase For distributors and trading companies with many customers, products and routes. Agents take the messages around every order, from the first WhatsApp to the payment, inside the systems you already run. [Talk to the team](https://qantara.systems/contact) / [Read the thesis](https://qantara.systems/original/thesis) A morning of messages, sorted. The agent reads each message in the order it came and sends it to where its work gets done. The orange one needed a person. Distribution runs on thousands of small messages, and together they decide your margin. We put agents on every one, so no order waits in someone's phone. ## What the agents do in distribution Five teams handle an order between the first message and the payment. Agents work alongside each of them, inside your ERP and on the channels your customers and salesmen already use. ### Sales: Every order entered the day it is sent How many messages does one order take? - **Take orders the way they arrive.** Customers order on WhatsApp, by voice note, with a photo of a handwritten list or through the salesman who visited them. The agent reads each one, in Arabic or English, and turns it into order lines. - **Match their words to your item codes.** “The usual rice” and “oil, the big tins” become the right items and pack sizes,, taken from what that customer has bought before and the names your salesmen use. - **Check stock and credit before confirming.** Each line is checked against stock on hand and the customer's account in your ERP. A line that cannot ship is offered as a substitute or a later date before the order is confirmed. - **Enter the chains' purchase orders.** Supermarket and hypermarket chains send purchase orders through their supplier portals or by email. The agent picks them up, checks the prices against your agreed list and enters them, so a mismatch is caught before the truck leaves. [See orders and confirmations](https://qantara.systems/solutions/orders) ### Customer support: Every customer answered from the record How much of the day goes on calls asking where an order is? - **Say where the order is.** From the order, the pick list and the van's route, on WhatsApp or email, in the customer's language, without anyone calling the warehouse. - **Say what is in stock, and when more arrives.** Stock on hand at the branch that serves the customer and, when an item is out, the date the next delivery from the supplier is due. - **Send the papers they ask for.** A copy of an invoice, the statement of account or the delivery note signed at the door, found on the record and sent. - **Put a complaint where it gets settled.** A short delivery, a damaged carton or a wrong price reaches the person who can settle it, with the order and the photos, and the customer is told who has it. [See customer inquiries](https://qantara.systems/solutions/customer-inquiries) ### Operations: Every delivery booked into the store's receiving window Is every delivery slot confirmed the day before? - **Book the slot at the store.** Distribution centres and large stores receive at set hours, often by appointment. The agent books the slot, sends what the appointment asks for and moves the delivery when a slot is lost. - **Turn orders into pick lists and drops.** Confirmed orders become pick lists in the warehouse and drops on the right van, in the order of the route, with each customer's receiving hours. - **Close each delivery with its proof.** The signed delivery note or the driver's photo is read and matched to the order, and a short or refused line is recorded the same day. - **Collect returns and near-expiry stock.** Damaged, expired and near-expiry goods agreed with the customer are put on the next run, counted on collection and passed to finance for the credit note. ### Finance: Every payment followed until it is in Which payments are late, and who has been told? - **Invoice what was accepted.** The invoice follows the signed delivery note, and returns, short lines and agreed price corrections get a credit note against the original, so the customer's statement matches what they received. - **Remind before the due date and after it.** Statements and reminders go out on the customer's channel and in their language. Each promise to pay is recorded and checked on the day it was due. - **Keep track of post-dated cheques.** Cheques handed to salesmen and drivers are logged with their dates and banks, deposited on the day they fall due and matched when they clear. A returned cheque reaches credit control and the salesman the same day. - **Release held orders on a decision.** An order held for credit goes to the credit controller with the balance, what is overdue and the last payment, and it is released the moment it is approved or paid. [See collections](https://qantara.systems/solutions/collections) ### Purchasing: Every reorder placed before the shelf is empty Are reorders placed before stock runs out? - **Watch stock against what is selling.** Stock on hand, open orders and what each item sells week by week, read from your ERP, so the reorder point moves with demand, ahead of Ramadan and Eid as much as in the summer. - **Draft the purchase order.** Quantities for each supplier from the reorder rules you set, in the supplier's pack sizes and minimums, for your buyer to approve. - **Chase the supplier's confirmation.** The order is acknowledged, the ship date confirmed and the documents asked for. A date that slips is flagged with the customer orders it affects. - **Tell sales what is coming.** When stock is short, the salesmen and the customers waiting for it hear the arrival date, so nobody promises what is not there. [See supplier follow-ups](https://qantara.systems/solutions/supplier-follow-ups) ## Beyond the five teams Some of the work around an order happens on the road, with the brands you carry and before a customer has an account at all. - **The van's day, reconciled.** A van salesman loads stock in the morning, sells, collects cash and cheques and brings back what did not sell. The agent reconciles the load, the sales, the returns and the money each evening, and names what does not add up. Every van closed the same evening, with the gaps named. - **Reports for the brands you carry.** Principals ask for sell-out by outlet, stock cover and promotion results, each in their own format. The agent builds them from your ERP on their schedule and sends them for your sign-off. Your brands get their numbers on time, from one record. - **Near-expiry stock sold, not written off.** Stock coming close to its date is found in the warehouse and offered to the customers who buy it fastest, at the price you allow, before it has to be collected back. Less stock written off, sold while it can be. - **New accounts opened with their papers.** A new shop asks to buy on credit. The agent asks for the trade licence, the tax certificate and the credit application, checks they are complete and readable, and opens the account for credit control to approve. New customers ordering in days, with complete files. ## How it works for distributors 01 **Embed.** Our engineers sit with sales, the warehouse and finance and follow a week of orders through: every message each one took, who answered it and where it waited. That becomes the baseline, and the longest wait is where we start. 02 **Build.** The agent matches the customer's own words to your item list, asks once when two items could fit, checks stock and credit, and enters the order in your ERP before it confirms. 03 **Scale.** Every word a customer uses for your items, once matched, stays on the record. The next branch and the group's other companies start from it, and only what is new is asked. 04 **Measure.** Messages per order and the days from order to confirmation, delivery, invoice and payment, each against the month before we start, counted with your team. ## A price change needs its reasons Landed costs moved this year: freight, insurance and lead times changed from one booking to the next. When your costs rise, your prices have to follow, and for essential goods a rise can need the regulator's approval first, argued from the supplier's invoice, the freight and the duty. Agents keep each item's landed cost on the record as those documents arrive, so the case for a new price is ready when you need it, and the price reaches every list and open order on the day it applies. The landed cost behind a new price. Each grey column is one cost of landing the item, built on the last; the orange one is what rose since the last shipment. ## Built around the systems you run Nothing has to be replaced to start. Agents work inside your ERP and warehouse system, read your price lists and stock, and answer on the channels your customers and salesmen already use. - ERP and accounting - Warehouse system - Van sales and route apps - Price lists - Email - WhatsApp Business - Retailers' supplier portals - Banking feeds - Spreadsheets ## What distributors ask us **Our customers order through salesmen, not systems. Does that still work?** Yes. Most orders start as a visit, a call or a voice note. The salesman sends it the way he does today and the agent enters it, so he keeps the customer and stops typing. **Does this work with our ERP?** Agents read from and write to the ERP you run, through its own interfaces: orders, stock, credit, invoices and receipts. Nothing is migrated, and your team keeps the screens it knows. **Will customers know they are talking to an agent?** If you want them to, and the agent says so whenever it is asked. It writes in your company's name and the customer's language, and passes anything that needs a person to the salesman or the account manager with the whole thread. **What if our item list is a mess?** Most are. The first weeks clean it with your team: duplicate codes, missing pack sizes and the names customers really use. The agent works from that list, and anything it cannot place still goes to a person. **Do agents take orders by phone?** Calls your team takes stay with your team, and what was agreed reaches the order from their note or voice message. **Can agents chase payments without upsetting customers?** They follow the terms the customer agreed, in your tone, and stop the moment a payment or a promise comes in. A dispute or a long-standing account goes to the person who owns the relationship. **Where do we start?** Most distributors start with orders, because the messages one order takes are easy to count with your team and the quickest to cut. Collections and reorders follow on the same record. ## Other industries - [Logistics and freight](https://qantara.systems/solutions/logistics): Quotes, bookings, customs and delivery, on time. - [Automotive and heavy equipment](https://qantara.systems/solutions/automotive): Bookings, parts and customers followed up. - [Manufacturing and industrial](https://qantara.systems/solutions/manufacturing): Suppliers, schedules and the line kept moving. ## Start with one day of orders Tell us where orders come in today and who types them up. Our engineers take it from there, on site. [Talk to the team](https://qantara.systems/contact) / [Email us](mailto:hello@qantara.example) Muscat and across the Gulf --- This is the Markdown twin of the page at https://qantara.systems/solutions/distribution