We see them every where. In Utility billings, we see them as Account No. In purchases from suppliers we call them Vendor or supplier code. But no matter what you call them, Customer Code is always present in any Computerized or Manual Inventory document and system.
For companies starting out on their computerization of their Inventory or Billing System, they sometimes let the Software Reseller (who does not know a thing about your business except to sell his software product at all cost) do the thinking and implementation of a Customer Coding System BUT THIS IS THE WRONG THING TO DO.
You who has to live with the Inventory System forever, should get involved or at least, have a senior officer of your company get involve. Why?
A Customer Code should be able to tell you a story. Ex A customer comes to you with a complaint about a certain new Discount Scheme that your company implemented. You do not have any access to your laptop or you do not have remote access to your computer database. The only thing you have is your Sales Invoice that is now being shown by your customer. Who should you call?
Just looking at the code, the first prefix might tell what division the product falls, the second prefix should tell what product category or which District Sales Manager it falls under. And the third prefix could tell whether the customer is paying Regular price or enjoying already some discounts. With that, you could now give a call to the DSM and either ask him what that new Discount Scheme is all about or have your customer talk to the DSM, in which case your customer will be impressed.
Having a well-thought out Customer code can reap wonders for your Marketing Dept as they can do Data Mining by mixing-matching different parameters (or fields of a record) to sort according to say ethical pharmaceutical products for a given geographical location or sorting customers per sales manager per product, and so forth. It will allow you to do demographic stats (on a limited basis as when a code includers gender and age group) for purposes of cross-selling products by different divisions.
By the way, I would like to invite you to visit my Sulit Homepage as there are some business opportunities that you guys might be able to help me out with. If you are interested, just click the Sulit Logo below:
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| courtesy of rightideas-brightideas.blogspot.com |
You who has to live with the Inventory System forever, should get involved or at least, have a senior officer of your company get involve. Why?
A Customer Code should be able to tell you a story. Ex A customer comes to you with a complaint about a certain new Discount Scheme that your company implemented. You do not have any access to your laptop or you do not have remote access to your computer database. The only thing you have is your Sales Invoice that is now being shown by your customer. Who should you call?
Just looking at the code, the first prefix might tell what division the product falls, the second prefix should tell what product category or which District Sales Manager it falls under. And the third prefix could tell whether the customer is paying Regular price or enjoying already some discounts. With that, you could now give a call to the DSM and either ask him what that new Discount Scheme is all about or have your customer talk to the DSM, in which case your customer will be impressed.
Having a well-thought out Customer code can reap wonders for your Marketing Dept as they can do Data Mining by mixing-matching different parameters (or fields of a record) to sort according to say ethical pharmaceutical products for a given geographical location or sorting customers per sales manager per product, and so forth. It will allow you to do demographic stats (on a limited basis as when a code includers gender and age group) for purposes of cross-selling products by different divisions.
By the way, I would like to invite you to visit my Sulit Homepage as there are some business opportunities that you guys might be able to help me out with. If you are interested, just click the Sulit Logo below:
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