[eGuide] 7 benefits of business intelligence for HVAC and Plumbing

If you operate an HVAC or plumbing supply business, the ability to aggregate and analyze your business data will have a significant impact on whether you can meet market demands.

NB: This is an excerpt from our latest eGuide: 7 benefits of business intelligence for HVAC distributors and Plumbing suppliers

Mounting competition, increasing pressure on pricing and shrinking margins have made it even more important to capture, manage and analyze data to improve your ability to serve your customers.

Business Intelligence (BI) systems gather data from databases and silos across your business and consolidate it into a single source of truth for your entire operation. BI converts your raw data into actionable insights that you can drill into with only a few clicks. In a matter of seconds, you can analyze the data to make quick and informed business decisions.

Benefits of BI for HVAC and Plumbing

HVAC and plumbing parts are as many as they are varied.

The volume of data moving across your organization and between customers and partners can seem overwhelming.

For many companies, tracking purchases, transfers between branches and warehouses, returns and all the complexity associated with invoicing and margin and rebates calculations, as well as discounts and promotions can be daunting, error-prone and time-consuming process. These are the tasks BI is built to handle.

Business intelligence solutions can help you better understand and serve your customers.

With a modest investment in BI, you can improve on time in full (OTIF) metrics, revenue and cost control; give management, logistics, accounts and buying teams the ability to drill into valuable data for their own needs; and analyze current and historical data to identify trends in sales and demand to inform forecasts and estimations.

Below are seven key benefits of a modern BI system and how it will support your HVAC and/or plumbing supplies business.

Benefit 1: Reveal patterns in customer spending habits

Understanding what your customers are buying and not buying is critical to delivering the right products at the right time for the right price.

Phocas Software gives you instant visibility into your customers buying habits, so you can see patterns and be more responsive to their needs. Your customer will not have to worry about you running out of stock of a specific faucet, pipe fitting, furnace or thermostat because you are aligning sourcing and distribution activities based on their buying data.

Benefit 2: Identify new sales opportunities

Seeing what a customer is buying also provides an opportunity to offer complementary products.

Phocas helps identify gaps in the product mix within your customer’s spending habits so you can increase the basket share of your customers’ sales and reduce competitor activity.

Benefit 3: Improve customer service

With BI, your sales teams will be better informed about the needs of your customers.

They can use data when referring to recent orders, review any supply chain issues, ask about the quality of the products and review upcoming sales. When you understand your customers’ buying needs, you can raise your customer service to a new level. Drill into the numbers with Phocas to answer questions, assess the data and then implement strategies to address customer concerns before they even think about looking elsewhere for new suppliers.

Benefit 4: Improve inventory management

BI software will help you to analyze sales data and segment sales by customer and geographic region.

By separating these segments, you will have a clear understanding of future sales volumes and where these sales will take place. An analysis of current and historical data will help you identify trends in sales and demand to inform inventory forecasts and estimations.

With Phocas, you can track inventory, sales and orders side-by-side so you can eliminate any doubt about your purchasing and inventory management.

This has been a preview of our eGuide on the 7 benefits of business intelligence for Plumbing and HVAC. To download the full eGuide, click the button below.