It often happens that certain product ranges are only intended for a particular customer group.
Let’s look at some examples where this becomes a problem:
It enables Skynamo to limit products to certain customer groups. Here are some examples of the problem this would solve.
Example at customer 1:
Our product range of rusks are sold under the No-name brand label in one retail store, but they are sold under a different label in another retail store. Sales reps could make the mistake of placing an order for the No-name product at the wrong retail chain. This would result in downstream confusion and the order would most likely be rejected by the ERP or accounting package resulting in delays and listing problems.
Example at customer 2:
Our estate wine is only marketed and distributed in the Western Cape region. It should therefore not be available to, and may not be ordered by agents and customers outside of the Western Cape. If this does happen the result is an administrative nightmare. The mistake has to be communicated to the customer and the resolution might result in unnecessary shipping costs or an unhappy unsatisfied customer.
Luckily Skynamo now supports both these scenarios through a new configuration called Product availability. It works on the same principle as form scopes, where you make a form only show up at certain customer groups. In the example below the options show the availability of the Fizzy Soda 340ml product order unit named Bottles.
The available settings in this example are Region, Type and Status. These are custom fields on customers that have the “Can filter on this field” attribute checked. The default/empty setting in the fields are “All” so the product is available at all customers by default. If a region, type or status is selected in these dropdown boxes, the Fizzy Soda 340ml will only be available in the specified customer group.
All of the different Skynamo order interfaces will then prevent these products from being ordered at the other customer groups. These items will be greyed out in the order interface with the message “Not available at this customer” as showed in the picture below.
In order to make use of this functionality, you might have to add the required customer fields as a dropdown and then mark it as “Can filter on this field” for it to be used for scoping the availability. This can be a very time-consuming process so there are some alternative ways in managing the availability in bulk.
Importing product availability
The product availability can be edited in bulk by importing an Excel file. The picture below is a serving suggestion of what the import file might look like. After this import the top 3 products will only be available in the CT region. The top product will only be available to the Gold, Silver and Bronze Status customer in the CT Region and so on.
As always, if any of this is unclear or if you have any further questions please get in touch with our friendly support team at support@skynamo.com.
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