4 MANAGERS AND 20 000
BUSINESS CUSTOMERS

The client is business company, Ulmart internet store.
It’s annual turnover is quarter of billion of dollars. Impressive. This is for 2010. 2011 promises twice bigger turnover.

Almost one third of the turnover is brought to the company by its corporate clients (customers — legal entities and small wholesalers).
This huge chunk is serviced by four employees. Not because there are little "big fat" clients: as of Autumn 2010, there were 20,000 corporate clients, and they are all very different.

Ultima approach to organizing business processes is based on cherishing human labor. We consider that this is the most valuable and the most expensive part of the company.
Such expensive resources may not be silly spent on routine and formalized processes that may be automated. We all know that in order to receive client’s order on the phone means to communicate with the warehouse and adjust supply chain, confirm the books with the accounting department (financial debts, documentary debts), coordinate prices and terms, generate receipt, send it to the client, remind the client to pay, remind the chief logistics to order the truck (and control him three times). Everyday life of most post-soviet companies who due to little education and narrow mindedness turns around such work. No, this is not work. We cannot find appropriate word, but for sure it’s not work.

Reengineering of client’s business processes, we try to shift most of the operational functions onto the computers. As a result, the business capacity increases without additional resources, i.e. the labor productivity grows. The tempo increases, control is supported on the process levels, the expenses drop, and more money comes in. The employees who are left after optimizations are the brain ones and try to focus on their direct destination, which is company development; this process can hardly be formalized, and is almost purely creative: new services development, search of new clients, negotiations, business processes modernizations, work with people.

Example of practical implementation of such approach (let it be not too consecutive, but this is due to the reasons beyond our competence) is  Ulmart internet store. The employee of the corporate department does not even know their clients, does not recognize their voice. Clients are self-served. The goods are ordered or reserved via Ulmart internet store, the client receives automatic invoice calculated off current prices (more turnover — bigger discount). The accounts receivable are controlled automatically in background mode by criteria configured by the commercial director.
Motivational logic of seller and customer has been realized in case of delayed or advance payments.
Upon receipt of the invoice, the client issues payment and the goods are reserved and (if the delivery is ordered) shipped to the client at the provided address together with the set of closing documents.

That’s it. The transaction is complete, the client has goods, and the company has money.
The client did everything on its own, and the seller did not participate in the process at all.

That’s how 99% of all the transactions take place. No employees involved.
The remaining 1% includes the operations that cannot be automatized.
This is what those four employees are busy with. And even this activity is registered by the system.

Bargaining. If the client wants to bargain, they may argument their desired price by competitors’ offers. The employee can see the ‘bid’ and may accept or reject client’s price. Thus, the company avoids void bid and is more balanced in making decisions of price reduction. The system provides limitations of minimal profitability for each product range/total amount of transaction.

Special orders. If the client places complex non-typical order, such as workstation farm, this is what deserves to be negotiated.

Similarly, the clients who place very big orders want individual approach. No problem, the resources allow play games.

Clients search. The employees perform specific tasks that cannot be formalized: they search for the clients and negotiate initial transactions, increase clientele who may later generate background funds flow.

By the way, the clients are very happy with such format of relationship with the supplier. They don’t spend their time for nothing and find really available goods, or may order scheduled delivery. They are immediately invoiced. When the balance is paid, the goods may be picked up as soon as the order has been processed (if there is sufficient balance satisfying credit limitations, which is also controlled in background mode); i.e. the average time per transaction is three minutes.
High speed of work allows bigger sales and thus the prices for goods decrease due to the amounts of purchases, and the client knows that there is no sense to look for cheaper goods in another place. Even if they find 2 pennies less, they will find much bigger headache.

The other suppliers offer different scheme: "Hi John, This is Peter from Vector Ltd. Do you have those three things like that?
You owe me 3% cut because we buy from you! Remember? So? Will you call after four? Ok. I’ll be waiting". Terrible. Of course, such approach provides maximum 20 accounts a day per seller.
But this cannot be called volume of sales, or control, this is the past century.
Before Christ.