Looking to do away with the high costs of manual inventory processes, but unsure of how to justify your company’s investment into enterprise mobility hardware? Perhaps you know your company’s field service technicians, warehouse employees and project team members could all benefit from rugged mobile computers, computers that will not only eliminate the errors of manual processes, but that are also made to deal with the toughest of environments. Perhaps you’re looking for some way to justify the investment without exceeding your company’s budget. If that’s the case, don’t despair! There is a way to justify the investment in rugged mobile computers without breaking the bank. You know hand held computers will not only improve efficiencies, but will also enable your company to substantially reduce costs, while upgrading your internal and external service levels. Now you just have to prove it. So, how can you justify the investment in rugged hand held computers?
Justifying the investment in mobile computers isn’t as hard as it seems. To be successful requires the ability to quantify your company’s costs of manual processes. This means to track the high costs associated with the mistakes resulting from inaccurate inventory counts and data entry errors. The focus must be on justifying the investment, rather than trying to find money within the company’s budget. While it isn’t easy, it becomes much easier once you’ve quantified the costs of these aforementioned errors. After all, your company’s budget likely doesn’t include setting aside money to cover these errors, does it? Of course it doesn’t! Therefore, you must find the money for the investment by showing how your company can ill afford to continue with its current practices. So, how is this done?
- Track errors over a month or quarter: The first step is to track the number of errors that occurred during a given month or quarter. Focus on those mistakes made in inventory, the errors made on a given project, the mistakes made on site at the customer’s location, or the purchasing errors that resulted from inaccurate inventory counts. Did the company purchase more than needed and encountered inventory damage as a result of the error? Did a project go over budget because of inventory counting mistakes?
- Dollarize the impact of errors:It is one thing to track the incidence of these mistakes, but it’s something else entirely to dollarize their impact. While tracking the number of errors over a given period, make it a point to apply a dollar value to these errors. For instance, if your company purchased too much inventory because of a data entry error, then what was the company’s financing costs as a result of the mistake? Consequently, if your company didn’t purchase enough because of a different counting mistake, then what was the company’s cost of lost sales? You could measure these costs in terms of lost gross profit or sales totals.
- Summarize costs over a semi-annual and yearly period: In order to justify your company’s investment in purchasing hand held mobile computers, you must summarize these costs over a given period. Track the number of times these errors occurred, apply a dollar value to those errors and then summarize the company’s total costs. You could forecast these costs over a semi-annual or yearly period. Afterwards, supporting the investment is a much easier process.
Don’t try to find the money within your company’s current budget to justify the investment in rugged mobile computers. Instead, take an approach predicated on showing how the company can no longer afford not to upgrade its enterprise mobility applications. Concentrate on showing the costs to the company of its manual processes. Doing this will help demonstrate why investing in mobile computers isn’t only a good business decision, but a necessity for today’s business environment.