Listen to this articleNumeric Computer Systems, (NCS) is a global provider to Direct Store Delivery (DSD) Companies in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods Industry (FMCG).
Below is our recent interview with Robert Hochberg, President and CEO at Numeric Computer Systems:
Q: Can you tell us something more about the company and what you do?
A: We sell an optimized suite of solutions to these very unique companies to help them manage their business.
We provide consulting and support services to help them learn to use the software and technical services if they require any customization.
We have clients on every continent (except Antarctica!) and offices strategically placed to support these clients.
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Q: Can you give us insights into your solutions?
A: The NCS suite of solutions provide the DSD company with the tools to handle the challenges of the FMCG Industry.
The Sales, Delivery and Merchandising processes in a DSD company are quite different than other industries.
Sales can be captured in store with a pre-sales representative, or called in to an order desk, or calculated from a projection based on previous demand, or just sold at the point of sale to name just a few.
Delivery can be done by a delivery truck owned by the company, or an independent operator or third party logistics company.
Merchandising can be done by an employee or third party.
Sometimes more than one of these task are done by the same person and sometimes not.
There is rarely one proper way to service an entire client base of a DSD company, and our solutions allow you to service each client in the most effective manner for that client, improving customer service and satisfaction.
The point of delivery can be in a word messy. Even if you have a preorder there are numerous events that regularly happen to cause the “pro-forma” invoice to need to be adjusted.
There are cash collections, product returns, delivery adjustments caused by product shortages or order capture errors, containers (trays, cases, pallets, etc) that are to be left and returned, as well as just changes to what the client wants to be delivered at this point.
As I said before there are clients that place no order and you walk in and sell them product real-time at their shelf, and clients that have a stock to inventory that you true up at point of sale.
Our solutions include an integrated mobility solution to capture all of these changes and adjustments along with any signatures and store stamps to produce a clean electronic finalized invoice to the client on the spot.
The mobility solutions also direct and capture the activities of the presales and merchandising teams.
For enterprise companies running a full ERP solution, NCS can provide the back office order to cash and mobility solutions for the DSD business seamlessly integrated to the ERP.
If a client does not use an ERP we can also provide the manufacturing and accounting functions to complete the solution end to end.
Q: You’ve focused on the needs of the fast moving consumer goods markets for over 50 years. What has changed over that time?
A: Wow, that is quite a journey.
The funniest part is we are back where we started!
NCS started as a service bureau, and we allowed companies to share our computer resources for their needs for a recurring service charge.
The real changes over the years is the method we use to capture the data.
After more than 30 years of selling and licensing solutions, we are back to providing the service to clients using a shared resource, SaaS, for a recurring service charge.
The difference is the method we use to capture the data.
Initially everything was on paper and hand written, and the advent of computers allowed this information to be keyed in and printed, but everything was still largely done by hand.
Eventually special purpose mobile computers allowed these to be captured in the field and printed on the spot.
Now with the wireless technology and connectivity and mobility solutions you can perform all the work and electronically send all the documents wherever needed to avoid all printing.
I kind of think back to 30 years ago when you rented a car, it was such an ordeal. You needed to call to make the reservation, wait in line, get the car and be checked out.
Now you make the reservation on the phone, walk to your car and drive away!! The efficiency gained is enormous, we are doing the same things for our clients.
Everything is more intuitive, everything is more predictable, everything is more efficient, everything is more connected.
Our clients succeed and profit on the efficiency of their operation and we need to remove cost from their process, which is what we do.
Q: What types of businesses do you serve? Which industries?
A: Our clients are manufacturers and distributors of products such as bread, beverages, cheese, ice cream, milk, snacks, etc.
Many of our clients sell products that have perishability and handling issues that further complicate the distribution and sales process.
Our clients deal with millions of transactions a month, that each are of modest cost and a thin profit margin.
These transaction fly through the supply chain turning inventory at much higher rates than almost any other industry.
So managing millions of transactions, that are occurring very quickly and have little margin, requires highly specialized and optimized solutions.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We are currently refreshing all of our technology to the most modern and user friendly offering available.
We have finished the refresh of the mobility and anticipate the refresh of the back office to be finished by next year.
We are in the process of converting all of our clients from a traditional licensing model to a service model with the introduction of the refreshed software.
We are supporting the clients that want to move the solution to the cloud and hopeful to see all of this transition over the next few years.
We have been aggressively working in the AI space which is very exciting. We want to us AI to help our customers find anomalies in data that requires attention.
Rather than have a business analyst mine data trying to find things that may need attention, we want to present the problems to them and have them solve it!
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