Stage 5 post implementation best practice customer checklist

Owned by John Nairn
Last updated: Jun 05, 2020 by Sharon Harden (Unlicensed)
14 min read

Overview

Office Brands and Readysell have agreed that each Readysell implementation is to be ranked by the level of best practice delivered to the member.  There are three defined levels of practice.

(blue star)
Core Competencies
  • Minimum level required to make successful use of the Readysell software.
  • Includes successful conversion to Readysell from your previous system and use of Office Brands integration.
  • This level must be achieved by the time your store goes live with the Readysell software.
(blue star)(blue star)
Recommended Practices
  • Required for all members unless there is a reason why some of those practices can’t be implemented at a particular site.
  • Making better use of advanced deliverables.
  • Members should be enjoying all benefits of following recommended practices within three months of go-live.
(blue star)(blue star)(blue star)
Best Practices
  • Highly recommended but optional
  • Practices utilized by flagship members wishing to make optimal use of Office Brands integration and Readysell features.
  • Members who choose to implement best practices should be able to enjoy benefits within twelve months of go-live.

During the first week after the go live weekend


  • Check with your warehouse team and check you do not have too many pieces of paper flowing around the warehouse as picking slips.  If you are using automatic warehousing, your team can have trouble moving to the new approach.  If there are two many shipments being printed or your team is having trouble keeping up then contact Readysell.  This can easily become a major issue.
  • Make sure your bookkeeper has started on bank reconciliations and has the balances from your old system converted to Readysell
  • Check that all the old reports you used to run have been replaced by reports from Readysell
  • Check that purchasing, purchase receipting and sales are not falling behind.  This can become a major issue quickly
  • Make sure sales back orders are being followed up.  Transitioning to the new way of managing sales back orders can be an issue
  • Make sure that all old manual systems have been replaced by Readysell
  • Make sure contracts are flowing to the web properly


Core Competencies

  • Basic financials using cards (customers and suppliers), bank reconciliations and general ledger
  • Customer history button and product sales history buttons as well as extract sales in customers. Sales history is converted from existing system if possible.
  • Customization using view variants and reports from the Readysell store
  • Sales, Purchasing and financials operable with minimal disruption to day to day operations
  • Office Brands integration operable for OneX (catalogue) updates, flyers, contract prices and sales orders.
  • Basic sales reporting being used
  • Automated warehousing on all workstations other than POS workstations
  • Submitting tickets and JIRA and monitoring your outstanding tickets
  • Scan checking stock received into the business on purchase receipts (all receipts) or shipped out on sale shipments (BtoB sales only, not retail)
  • Automatic price updates from OneX
  • Key actionable reports such as dead stock, low margin and actionable metrics
  • Full usage of Office Brands integration including:
    • WebX integration
    • Loyalty system
    • Automatic OneX integration with overnight price updates and automatic catalogue/flyer loads
    • Contract price integration
    • Changing products to ezcodes using price book run
  • Handy Readysell Suggestions 

Recommended Practices

All Sites

Service module sites

Best practices

All Sites

  • Advanced financials such as bank reconciliation, general ledger etc.
  • Automated bank reconciliations
  • Best business practices alerts and to do lists
  • Full mobile app used for wireless warehousing, technicians, sales persons and deliveries
  • Full CRM using sales force
  • Full including telephone integration into Readysell
  • Automated contract management
  • Review the standard reports list and decide which to use in your site
  • Decide if you want to put sales on hold automatically if the customer has an overdue balance or if the customer has exceeded their credit limit
  • Decide if you want your web site or Readysell to be the master for pricing of web orders, By default web orders keep the price that was displayed on the web.  You can elect to reprice web orders when they are received into Readysell
  • Make use of mentoring opportunities with other Dealers using Readysell.  You can learn things from other dealers that you can't pickup from any training program
  • Plan on regular training sessions from Readysell every three to six months, to keep your team up to speed with new developments and to handle changes in staff

Service sites

  • Machine hire
  • Automatic meter usage capture via FMAUDIT / Print Audit/Emails from machines/Canon integration etc.



Save labour by implementing the mobile app

  • You will probably never get the mobile app running in your business without help
  • But with a few hours training you can have it running in days and start saving hours of staff time right away
  • Buy an Android device and talk to Readysell about a blue tooth scanner that staff can use with the mobile device
  • Schedule a few hours training with Readysell. 
  • Then start saving time by eliminating the need for printed reports and a lot of data re-entry for sales,service, warehouse and purchase receipting


Automatic warehouse works fine with drop shipment sales

  • Either:
    • Set the supply type to ignore on all lines on a sale. There is a button to change the supply type on all lines.
    • Note: If you know you are going to do a drop ship purchase for the sale order when you are entering it. Then you can


Improve customer service by controlling the number of deliveries on sale orders using supply types

    • If your business is mainly BtoB, consider using the mass updater to either:
      • set all customers set supply type to Instock. Don’t want to delivery unless fully in stock
      • Set customer max number of shipments to 1
    • If your business has stock located 100% in a retail area:
      • set all customers set supply type to allocated. release stock right away so BtoB customers get the stock before retail customers can grap it. Deliver stock as soon as you can
      • Set customer max number of shipments to 0. Allow as many shipments as it takes, again, because of contention for stock with the retail customers
      • Set the automatic warehousing release percentage on your site (in system administration) to 0. This will release shipment for anything that you have in stock 

Setup an Outlook rule to inform your team when a web order is received

  • When an email for a web order arrives in outlook. Send the email to a folder and plan a gong sound on a computer to let everyone know a web order has turned up


Eliminate printed invoices by changing invoice printing to an opt in service

  • BtoB: Set all customers to print automatic and email batch.  Added notification on the invoice layout, swapping to email. Then over time drop the print option.  For BtoB, most customers will not bother to opt in.  After a short space of time you can turn off printing for almost all customers, saving you time and paper!


Provide better service by understanding sell prices

  • Use the explain price button to understand why price is what it is.  In particular, if a customer asks about the sell price on any sale.  Your first step should be to highlight the line and click the "explain price" button.  You can normally explain the price to the customer right away


Improve margin by eliminating fixed sell contract prices

  • Convert to markup from fixed sell to markup from current cost contract prices
  • Sell prices will float on current cost
  • Maintenance of contract prices will be reduced. 
  • If the contract price sell drops below advertised prices, the system can give the customer the current or catalogue price anyway, avoiding any issues around the contract price becoming more expensive than advertised prices

Control you sales back orders with supplier lead times

  • Set supplier lead times. Review purchase orders and receipts for the last few months on your top ten suppliers. Then set the supplier ETA on the top suppliers. This improves your ETA on your sales back orders.
  • The sales back order list is automatically colour coded based on due date. Make better use of Readysell's built in features


You can  can't get them most out of your Readysell system unless you use Analysis reports, but you are going to need a few hours help to get started

  • Analysis reports can give you more insights into your business than any other feature in Readysell
  • It will only take you a few hours to get a much better understanding of your business
  • Don't try to get started with Analysis reports by yourself:
  • Use the training videos on Analysis reports in the training guide
  • Then schedule a few hours with Readysell's training team to setup some reports showing you your staff performance, inventory position etc.
  • Once you get started with Analysis reports you will never look back, the opportunities for understanding your business by drilling into your data are almost endless


Budget for training to achieve maximum results

  • You are going to need substantial training assistance both before and after implementation
  • Even sites that have been running Readysell for many years could benefit from regular training in order to keep up with new features and new procedures
  • If you have been using Readysell in exactly the same way for six months, you have waited too long!
  • Build Readysell training into your ongoing business plan. Your business will continue to benefit from every training session


Use automatic emails to let customers know when service jobs or sales are ready for pickup

  • Workflow status on service orders and sales can automatically email or sms customers when there is something at your business ready for pickup
  • Workshop service work can send messages to the customer when the job is complete
  • Back orders specially purchased for customers can message the customer when stock comes in
  • Technicians and other internal staff can be messaged when they are assigned jobs, customers need a call etc.
  • On workflow status you can automatically email/sms a customer when the job is ready to pickup. This can also apply when the job is waiting on parts.
  • When a sales order goes from none to active. Sms the customer thank them for their order.  Then let them know their sales is now active
  • When back orders arrive for customers. Send them an sms notification that the stock turns up
  • Set workflow status to sms/email customer when their service work is ready to be picked up


Collect cash sooner by using automatic overdue messages and online links for customers

  • Automatic email to customers when overdue.  Steve want’s to send out the notification starting from 15 days overdue.
  • Add link to the online account to the email.  So customers can see their open items and reprint their invoices
  • Add a link to your statement to the customers online account balance


Make best use of Office Brands automated marketing and Other CRM features by regularly reviewing the email address details on your contacts list

  • Email address review. Include customer ranking on contacts list.
  • Allow the user be able to review contacts for top customers


Improve cash flow by regularly reviewing your supplier payment terms

  • Review supplier payment terms.  Set some to a longer period of days where you can. 
  • Also 7 days where appropriate, for example to get a sharper price from the supplier


Save time by paying business credit cards with supplier payment runs

  • User zero payment terms to consolidate your business credit card expenses under a supplier
  • Setup yourself as a payment term of zero. Also for cooperate cards make the Amex etc. as the supplier
  • Then you can include them in a payment run along with your regular suppliers


Eliminate filing of supplier invoices

  • Most are via email
  • Advanced document scanners like a Brother PDS 6000 can allow you to implement a document management system for very little investment
  • Save printed supplier invoices to a shared folder with a subfolder for each supplier
  • Use standard PDF editing technologies to make the supplier invoice PDF file with a completed stamp when you invoice them in Readysell
  • Then archive the supplier invoice and throw all printed supplier invoices in the bin
  • Encourage your suppliers to email invoices where possible

Eliminate filing of paper proof of delivery:

  • At POS and on BtoB sales, require a order number for all sales
  • Use a POS proof of delivery signature tablet, signature captured
  • Capture signature on mobile app for customer deliveries
  • If you have to get a paper signature as proof of delivery.  Scan the shipment, set a recognition rule to detect the barcode, set the name of the file to be “s” and barcode.  Then have the scanned shipment automatically save in the correct folder with the correct name.  Then shred the signed proof of delivery

Improve staff satisfaction and cut costs by using Readysell payroll

  • Staff can print their own group certificates and reports using cloud based access
  • Always up to date with current pay and tax office rules
  • Economical licencing


Improve stock turns by eliminating dead stock

  • Run a dead stock report at lest every six months
  • You can use a stock on hand report for product that have not had a shipment for two years
  • You can also add a saved list view on products that shows stock that has not sold for two years.  Make it automatically load with a filter to not show products that have not sold in the last two years and were created more than two years ago and have stock on hand


Clean up your customer list by setting the status of customer that have not purchased in the last two years to closed

  • Set status to account closed
  • If there is not much maintenance required. Use the contacts list view, drag on last sale date and filter for customer and last sale date more than two years ago
  • If you have a lot to do, use the bulk update run where status is active, iscustomer is true and last sale date more than two years ago


Save staff time and reduce errors by using bulk update to turn serial number required for all printer categories and software categories.

  •  Bulk update can turn serial number required on sales and purchases on for all products in specified categories, for example printers
  • This saves your staff from having to manually turn those check boxes on
  • Reduces errors caused by staff forgetting to set the required flags 


Turn statements into a marketing tool by adding hyper links to marketing material

  • Batch emails of statement has a hyper link to marketing. Edit your email batch defaults each month.  Add a link to the latest catalogues and flyers.
  • Do the same all your email defaults for emails to customers, manual emails, invoice reprints they can all be made more effective by adding marketing links to your email defaults. So statements and emails all act as a marketing tool
  • Add a marketing related image relevant to the hyperlink, then associate a hyperlink to the image
  • Also change report headers and footers to contain marketing message, a lot of your invoices and statements are sent electronically.  Use online tools like ckcheck to edit your html message.  The paste the descriptions into the report header/footer to the online html editor
  • Then preview the report right away.  Put a directory prefix \\server\\folder\file before images, after saving images to a specific shared folder.  So the image resolves when you send the email or output the report


Record who did what on shared workstations using operator codes

  • You may have some shared workstations, like POS workstations for example
  • For those workstations: set operator required for the shared workstation in workstation settings in system administration
  • An operator code will be required each time users enter a new sale
  • You will be able to record who entered and worked with transactions, even on workstations that are used by many different staff members

Detect and prevent more than one staff member working on the same order at the same type

  • Turn on sales system references to lock sale orders for two minutes if the system detects two people working on the same sale order
  • If another staff member accesses the sale order you are editing, they are locked out for two minutes.


Automation cost, sell, catalog and flyer updates

  • Just turn it on, it makes no sense to manually update prices and costs, as Readysell can probably do it all for you automatically
  • Follow the suggested procedure for preparing for and turning on automatic price updates
  • Automatically load flyers
  • Automatically load price updates, change all cost and sell for existing products. Automatic Office brads products. Specify catalogues that are updated: ONF, ONC, WEB01.  Creates new products for those
  • Don’t automatically add new products. Except for as specified above. Add them when required using do you want to copy from price book.
  • All changes are logged on the audit trail on products also on the office brands product update


Use Office Brands units rather than flagging products to not update from office brands:

  • Don't set products to ignore cost and sell updates from Office Brands just because you are using different units to Office Brands
  • For retail business, you can breakdown packs so you can sell them as a pack/box by default but still have the option to sell them as eaches while still updating costs and sells from Office Brands
  • This is definitely an option you should be using if you have a retail area
  • There is a checkbox on products to show Office Brands units are available. Ob unit available.
  • There is also a checkbox that allows you to actually use the Office Brands units where available.  Use OB sell unit
  • Use OB Unit button to trigger the change

Don't allow yourself to be out of stock with key 'must have likes' even if average sales does not justify keeping them:

  • Average weekly sales is the best way to generate automatic purchasing for most products, but there are always some critical products you should have in stock even if they are not selling
  • You can extract with both average weekly sales and min/max into the same purchase run.  Use average weekly sales for most stock lines.  For critical items, use min/max reordering
  • Use min/max reorder for products you have to stock
  • Turn min/max allowed system reference on
  • Add a filter on the min/max run set in purchasing

Let Readysell manage your freight requirements

  • Use consignment labels
  • Use freight integration to automatically pick the best freight method for each package, print the carriers own labels and electronically transfer the manifest to your freight supplier

Save time on your own deliveries by using delivery run:

  • Scan them all into a delivery run and put out a report
  • Don’t print delivery dockets, the driver just hands over the invoice
  • Print  delivery run or use the mobile app
  • Enter number of items on sale shipments.  This shows on delivery run.  You can enter the number of items onto a sale shipment for a few days after the shipment is posted.


Split service order activities by function to increase efficiency

  • Avoid activity codes that include both labour and a fixed fees.  Such as a call out code to no longer include the first 30 minutes
  • You want to spit fixed charges from labour, so you can report on the actual labour hours
  • Instead, add a contract price to require at least half an hour of labour on all service orders
  • Schedule an hour with the Readysell training team to review and optimize your service order activities on the mobile app so they flow effectively into Readysell


Syncronize staff calendars for service and other work with the Scheduling module

  • Budget on a few hours training to learn how to use scheduling
  • Include the schedule Cal feed into your outlooks screen so you can see the staff schedule when on the move
  • Also feed the staff schedule onto the laptop and other devices used by your team
  • Setup cal feed to technicians phones
  • Readysell can automatically add service jobs to the schedule. You can then drag and drop the service work to adjust the schedule
  • Integrate with automatic emails and sms to staff/customers using workflow status and alerts 


Use initial counts for new machines

  • Use the initial count field on new machine that has existing counters

Use sale shipment runs for customers that get fixed charges each month:

  • Use sale shipment run to charge customers
  • Adjust then reuse the same sale shipment run every month to save time


Use a single service order, to track new machine history without the need for a separate sale order and service order:

  • Use service order.  Put the new product on the service order
  •  Add a service order line for a run up non-stock product with a fixed fee
  • Then service order lines for the real products.  Example ten laptops, a fixed fee for run up, plus labour hours but give them 100% discount on labour
  • Purchase the stock using the purchase button on service orders selecting an allocated purchase on purchase popup window from the service order
  • Then finalize the service order when all the stock has been receipted
  • Do not create a separate sales order and service order.


Use product cost method on categories to get realistic labour costs on service work:

  • The product categories for non-stock products allow you to select a number of costing methods.  Select to use the cost on the non-stock product, a percentage of the sale value, manual entry of the cost etc.
  • Cost your products so that you get real GP estimates on service orders


Import products from suppliers from spreadsheets

  • Budget a few hours training time for Readysell to help you setup the required imports
  • Import supplier products to the price book, so you don't clutter up your product file with products you will never stock
  • After a little help from Readysell, you can automate even more of your new and existing product data

Best practice guides for key modules

Readysell Pro Best Practice Training Guide


Best Practice Checklist - Financials


Best practice checklist reports

Best Practice Report Implementation

Best Practice Guide - Administration