After three years in Nashville, Tenn., Delirium Wine & Spirits is well established as a regional beverage distributor. How that happened so quickly is largely attributable to two things: exceptional customer service — every order is filled within 24 hours without fail — and its eclectic beverage selection.

The company now is in the process of adding a third element for competitive edge: a sales app for tablets and the Web that dramatically improves customer transactions and helps Delirium’s team better manage its inventory, ordering and staff time, says Delirium President Stan Dibin.

The problem

With Delirium providing fine wines, spirits and high-gravity beer to approximately 300 stores and restaurants within roughly a 100-mile radius of Nashville, its outside sales team is constantly on-the-go. However, its sales system lacked efficiency. While it provided sales reps with access to inventory and a means to place orders, the interface was difficult. “It just wasn’t user-friendly,” Dibin says.

Even placing orders was a multi-step process. If a rep had a question about stock or credit information while visiting a customer, a phone call was made to the headquarters. There, someone would track down the data in question. Reps also wrote orders on paper and then entered the data into forms that were emailed to the sales manager, who would then enter it into Delirium’s sales software and, eventually, into their QuickBooks accounting system. An accountant would then go into QuickBooks and generate the customer invoices.

The search and choice

Dibin began exploring systems that could replace the functionally lacking system the sales team had used for two years. He began exploring systems that worked through tablet computers and even tested one, but the results of the distributor’s initial testing of sales tools on tablets were unsatisfactory — the tools did not take advantage of all that tablet technology had to offer — so they were never rolled out to the full team.

Dibin continued evaluating systems and eventually narrowed it down to four systems, including the one they had been using. By then, Dibin and Delirium’s sales manager knew exactly what the company and its sales reps needed from a new system: ease of use, simplified processes, the ability to capitalize on the benefits of the iPad, and the ability to integrate with QuickBooks. They ultimately chose SupeRep from Wrnty because it is easy to use and highly mobile, Dibin says. Sales reps now have the full catalog of Delirium’s offerings on their iPads and can quickly and easily update their catalogs. They also now can place their orders right from the customer site and check product availability in real time.

Reps also can use SupeRep to take inventories of their products within stores, which makes stocking Delirium’s warehouse less of a guessing game.

“With SupeRep, we can more accurately forecast the inventory we will need to have and the inventory we won’t need to have — that’s huge for us,” Dibin says. “When you have hundreds of items servicing 300 accounts and you do next-day delivery without exception, you cannot afford not to have enough stock, but we also don’t want to be overstocked.”

Benefits

Delirium is in the process of rolling out its Wrnty SupeRep deployment. Once the rollout is complete, it will be working on some customization of the system. Already, the benefits are adding up, Dibin notes. “Wrnty is more expensive than the solution we used in the past, but it’s worth it,” he says. “It definitely has much more practical functionality for us.”

Some of the major advantages of using SupeRep for Delirium include easier reporting; a high-resolution, intuitive online catalog; and the ability for reps to place orders and check inventory levels and customer status all in real time.

Another critical time savings factor — and quality-of-life issue — is that the new system allows for orders to be picked as soon as they are placed. There is no more waiting for the reps to email their orders at the end of the day, which often created a scramble in the warehouse and many late nights and early mornings so Delirium could keep its next-day delivery reputation solid. Now, orders are picked throughout the day. “There is just a lot more efficiency with our new system,” Dibin says.

About Delirium Wine and Spirits

Delirium Wine and Spirits is an emerging distributor in the Nashville, Tenn., area. The company’s mission is to promote and provide products that enhance the wine and spirits experience.

About Wrnty Ltd.

Established in 2006, Wrnty Ltd. offers web-based platforms focused on optimizing the sales, warranty and service modules for wholesale organizations.