CAM Keeping Tyre Dealers One Step Ahead During the Winter Months Through Efficient Stock Management Support
The final instalment of the winter tyre feature concerns CAM, with Steve Daly the company’s Commercial Director giving his thoughts on how leveraging CAM’s product offering can help tyre dealers stay ahead of the game when it comes to stock management and avoiding the potential pitfalls from having dormant, unsold product in your warehouse by the time summer arrives.
Daly : “Assuming Access to Tyre Stock is an Industry-Wide Challenge at the Moment”
Demands and requirements of tyre dealers differ between the winter and summer months, which ultimately influences what they require from IT suppliers such as CAM during the same periods. Steve Daly, the Commercial Director for CAM, explained specifically what tyre dealers were looking for from CAM in terms of support throughout the winter season, “The support tyre dealers demand during the winter months is easy access to both historical and up to date sales data and information that will help them make the correct decisions for purchasing.
“Assuming access to tyre stock which is an industry-wide challenge at the moment, it’s critical to order to right levels of winter-oriented inventory.”
During this feature most tyre manufacturers have emphasised the fact that their product lines are already designed to meet the challenges that the harshest of winters can pose. However, that being said, a recurring theme has been the importance of stock management and guaranteeing to have sufficient stocks of tyres in the right place at the right time in the case that weather conditions change abruptly. Daly and CAM have identified this trend.
He added, “The winter months are generally good for the business of our dealers unless they don’t have the all-season or winter tyre stock to service the ice, snow and or cold weather demand, so what they want is the right levels of stock of the right product, and what they are concerned about is the mischievousness of weather during the winter months.”
So, how does the company approach servicing this requirement? Daly explained that in order to meet this demand, the IT supplier is “constantly investing in its systems, including the Online Tyre Catalogue (OTC).”
“The OTC has enabled us to capture comprehensive manufacturer and wholesaler product and supply data that is of benefit to our customers, so they can anticipate trends and issues in the marketplace. In addition, we believe that having all this data under one roof ensures that we can communicate efficiently and effectively how this information could affect their business e.g. buying personnel, both positively and negatively,” he said.
Stock management problems such as ordering too much product which is then remains unsold by the time that the weather gets milder can be a large potential drain on a company’s cash flow. It’s this issue that CAM intends to solve and minimise through the use of its software and by leveraging of the Online Tyre Catalogue.
Daly added, “As a business, we understand this is an issue, so what we ensure is that an experienced dealer using our software can be linked to his tyre supplier delivery feeds via our OTC, as well as viewing trending sales data by tyre article, and collating these two critical decision support results together.”
Through this approach, dealers using CAM’s software can work closely with their suppliers to buy (and receive) as late as possible product which has, by its seasonal nature, a shorter consumer appeal - until the next winter season.