FMCG Suppliers - Improve Order and Inventory Management With Mobile Application

In this blog I am going to explain how FMCG suppliers can improve their order and inventory Management with Mobile Applications.

In the past we have built eCommerce solutions for FMCG suppliers and from our experience and research we found some issues faced by FMCG suppliers in their order and inventory management.

No Brand Awareness Among Customers

Most of the FMCG suppliers either supply their own brand or promote some other brands but their customers are not aware of those brands as there is no information available of that brand to customers. Customers do not place order for that brand and eventually brand does not work.

No Product Availability

Customer places an order with certain products but those products are not available in market hence either order is canceled or delayed and customers are not happy. Main problem here is order management is not connected with inventory management. There is no information in low stocks hence orders are placed but there is no stock. Even customers are not ware about delays hence they get frustrated and eventually cancels orders.

Inefficient Distribution of Orders

There is no proper information of stocks in inventory hence orders can not be fulfilled, specifically in case of multiple warehouses. Sometime orders goes to warehouses where items are not available. So order can not be fulfilled or gets delayed as it goes from one to other warehouse. Even customers are not ware about delays hence they get frustrated and eventually cancels orders.

Inefficient Schedule of Deliveries

Customers are spread across various locations but they don't have proper location information hence order delivery is not planned properly and there are no proper distribution routes. Hence cost and time of deliveries in increased which leads to lesser profit and chaos in supply management. 

No Data and Analytics of Past Orders of Customers

They don't have proper data of past orders of customers and there is no analytics so they can not identify target customers for specific goods and items and they can not offer better rates and offers to them on specific customers. 

To over come this issues FMCG supplier can go for solutions with mobile application for their supply chain management and orders and inventory management. With mobile applications orders, dispatch , shipping and salesman there will be significant improvement in their sales and orders management.

Benefits of Mobile Application for Orders

Your customer will use this application for placing orders. Here are some benefits of it.

• Brand awareness
• No delay any placing orders
• Feedback on orders
• Instant notifications of order status
• Instant notifications on order cancelation
• Real time tracking of orders and movement
• Promotional schemes
• Orders and items analytics
• Surveys and polls

Benefits of Mobile Application for Salesman

Your salesmen will use this application to place orders and see analytics. It enables the field guys to effortlessly conduct processes like order booking, payment collections, filing daily sales reports, merchandising operations etc in real time. 

• Route planning
• Activity planning
• Visit reporting
• Complain reporting
• Competition tracking

With our solution for FMCG suppliers, you will get following benefits.

• Seamless visibility on daily product movement including stock transfers
• Accurate information on sales, collections, sales returns across the distribution channel in real time
• Shorter order to cash cycle
• Improved market coverage
• Analytics like monthly sales, per area, per customers
• Improved logistics and cost cutting because of route planning
• Better inventory management with low stocks notifications
• Better dispatch management

If you are looking for such solution for your FMCG business, contact us now.

Android MediaRecorder Stop Failed - 1007

If you have ever used Android MediaRecorder to record video or audio in your android application, you must have faced this error. Recently I had nightmare in using MediaRecorder in my android application. I think it's most unstable class in Android SDK and there is a different behavior in each device. In this blog I am going to explain more about this and possible resolution of this.


First lets see wha's the meaning of this error : Android MediaRecorder Stop Failed - 1007

There is no documentation on Android developer site about this error code but from my experience I found out that there are three reasons behind this error

1) You called stop method too early.

According to documentation on MediaRecorder.java class it says

Stops recording. Call this after start(). Once recording is stopped, you will have to configure it again as if it has just been constructed. Note that a RuntimeException is intentionally thrown to the application, if no valid audio/video data has been received when stop() is called. This happens if stop() is called immediately after start(). The failure lets the application take action accordingly to clean up the output file (delete the output file, for instance), since the output file is not properly constructed when this happens.

That means if you start recording and in couple of seconds you call stop recording there is no significant data of recording hence stop method throws an exception. So you must wait for sometime. From my testing I found out that you should at least for minimum 10 seconds. So the solution is to have stop method called inside try catch block and handle the exception properly or do not allow user to stop recording till 10 seconds of start of recording. You can either disable stop button and make it enable after sometime. Once the exception is thrown, you should clean the the resources, release media recorder and camera and all other objects.

2) Error in Writing to Output file

We have to set output file to MediaRecorder when we start recording. When you stop all the recorded data will be appended in output file specified by you on start. This could failed due to reasons like insufficient space to write file or you don't have permissions to write to external and internal storage due in Android 6.0 on words.

3) MisMatch in preview size and video size set in MediaRecorder

I have mentioned about this in my previous blog. You can read it here.

Android MediaRecorder Start Failed - 19

Hope this helps you and save you time.

Improve Your Marketing with Big Data Analytics of Locations Visited by Your Sales Persons

Many people believe that great marketing is an art form, but lately big data has added a serious dose of science into the mix. Smart marketers are now relying on data more than ever before to inform, test, and iterate their strategies. Organizations can make use big data analysis and can improve their marketing strategy. By using big data analysis organizations will have clear insight of their sales and its outcome and using which they plan strategy accordingly. They can also predict the future growth using current data and can have plan on that. They will know about clear ROI (Return On Investment). I will explain it by some practical investments.

We have mobile app for tracking sales persons. You can get more information from here.

Employee Tracking Application for On Field Employees - Adsum Mobile GPS APP

With this we get locations visited by sales persons everyday. These locations data could be in millions for each month and years and with our Big Data Analytics and using our Mobile Application you will get following informations.

Most Frequently Visited Areas for Sales

This will give you clear demographic information about your customers, where they are, in how many numbers are they and amount of sales generated from each area. This will give you clear insight about your demographic reach. You can implement future marketing strategies and deploy heavy sales sales force in area from where you get maximum leads. These location based information will be useful for you to target sales in particular area at particular time.

Optimize Customer Engagement

With location analytics you will now that where they are, what they want, how often they make a purchase, when and how they prefer to be contacted, and many other important factors. This way you can have better customer engagement.

Most Effective Sales Persons

With the location data analytics, you will know that who can be your salesman of the year as you know that how many areas a sales person have covered, how many KMs he has travelled on an average and how much sales he has generated from each area. This way you will know the strength of your sales person in particular area and you can define your sales strategies according to that and send your nest sales persons to the area from where you get maximum business.

Manage Your Traveling Expenses

As you reimburse traveling expense of your sales person each day, with this data you will have clear information on your ROI of Traveling Expense. As you will have report of traveling expense vs sales vs areas so you know that from which area you get maximum returns.

If you want this solution, contact us and know more about it.