July 2022 Advisory Board Survey Results
We want to share with you the results from our July Advisory Board survey and how we propose to respond to them.
Before we proceed, we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that responded to the survey. Your opinions are incredibly valuable and help us to prioritise different developments and gain insight into other areas.
Here are the results and other key information we gained from the survey:
Initiatives
Wholegood Management and Security
We were interested to know about the location and security management of your Wholegoods.
Most respondents, almost 44%, mentioned that they perform the wholegood stock checks across their depots/site annually, while 39% carry out the process monthly, and the rest less often.
A resounding 83% of the respondents are interested in automating location management across their depots.
A group of 44% respondents say that they have some security concerns of their wholegoods that location management may minimise.
We have recorded your additional information where security concerns might be mitigated by proper location management, and we will be investigating how we can incorporate this benefit into the product.
Digital Signature/Contract Management
We wanted to get your opinion on digital signature capture/contract management solutions.
We have identified different scenarios where your business issues legally binding contracts to customers or other parties.
Based on your feedback, the following areas are where the contracts are being issued –
- Service Contracts/ Maintenance Contracts and Hire Agreements.
- Self-Bill Expiry Dates, Wholegoods Sales Agreements, handover and installation forms and Extended Warranty.
- New Account Forms and Marketing Information.
- Employment contracts, Finance Agreements, Data Protection Agreements.
- Collection of parts, Sales orders.
More than half of respondents (59%) said they have used a digital signature capture/contract management solution such as e-sign, docusign, etc.
Almost all of you have agreed that a Gold-integrated digital contract & e-signature solution would be useful for your business, with a resounding group of respondents indicating that they are very interested to implement an integrated solution.
The majority of respondents have agreed that they would find value in capturing digital signatures on a countertop pad or mobile device during Gold processes, and having these signatures embedded into documents generated by Gold, removing the need to print and sign.
We have added your responses to our ongoing research and scoping of these potential future features.
Manufacturer/Supplier Integrations
Additional Wholegood Stocking Finance Schemes
Thank you for sharing the list of the finance companies you currently work with. It will be used for statistical research purposes to improve the finance schemes offerings.
Many of the respondents work with the finance companies whose links are already available in Ibcos Gold.
However, only 35% of the respondents utilise the Gold link. For those who do not utilise the existing links, we will pass the available information on to your account manager to discuss the benefits with you.
35% expressed interest in working with either Societe Generale Equipment Finance or CNH Capital Finance. These two possible new integrations will be explored in more depth.
Graco – Pulse-Pro Fluid Management System
We found that only 22% of you currently use fluid management systems such as Orilink or Piusi.
Most respondents, almost 88%, are not aware of Graco Pulse-Pro Fluid Management System.
However, there is an overwhelming response from 62% of the respondents who would be interested in a link between fluid management and Gold. We will pass this information on to your account manager for further discussion.
Granit
47% of the respondents would be interested in the option to import a parts order from Granit, including up to date pricing, to a Gold Purchase order.
We have also recorded additional information you provided on integrations with Granit and will discuss these with them.
Automatically Processing of Supplier Purchase Invoices
While the majority of the respondents said that they receive the supplier invoices via an emailed PDF, a few of you still receive invoices by post.
Almost 60% of respondents mentioned that they receive and process more than an average of 1000 invoices in a month.
73% of respondents said they use an internal approval process for their supplier invoices.
Those who are managing the approval process manually would like to consider introducing an integrated approval process.
A large proportion (62%) of respondents would be interested in a chargeable service to allow the scanning of purchase invoices which would then be matched to suppliers and posted to Gold.
This information will help us to evaluate the potential options.
General Queries
Mass Data Upload to Gold
59% of the respondents said that their business would benefit from a module that allows you to mass upload parts data into Gold.
Most respondents agreed with the areas mentioned where it would be useful to carry out an upload into the system. The utility would be beneficial in the following areas where you would be able to –
- Update Bin Locations
- Import new parts that don’t already exist in Gold
- Update your own non-manufacturer retail prices
- Update Bar Codes
Offline Gold (7344)
53% of the respondents mentioned that they suffer from system outages.
However, this only happens occasionally for most of you. You have responded that the outages are rare events.
Majority of the respondents, almost 71%, agreed that their business would benefit from having Gold available offline on a read only basis to access crucial information in the event of an outage.
Stock Check Enhancement (GOLD-8841)
A group of 82% respondents said that a Parts Inventory “Spot Check” would be useful for their business.
We will take your feedback on this into consideration when planning future enhancements.
Result PDF
Watch Out for Future Surveys
We hope to hear from even more of you with our next survey; your opinions really matter to us as they help us shape the future of Gold.
