Background
Wide World Importers is a distribution company whose primary customers are small boutique shops which sell globally-sourced products including unique or hand-crafted items such as perfumes and ceramicware. Through the Wide World Importers sales cycle, the commission-based sales team identifies opportunities and negotiates with shops by using a quoting process. The products may or may not already exist in the company's current product list.
The company has the following divisions and areas of responsibility:
Current environment
- Wide World Importers use Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. There is a single legal entity.
- The primary distribution center for the company is located in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. There is an additional warehouse in California which receives imported goods from container ships. When goods are received in California, the goods are transferred to Nevada for distribution. No orders are shipped directly from California.
Requirements. Sales
- The company has two teams of sales representatives: East and West. Each team has one representative for each of the following categories of goods: perfumes, ceramicware, and all other goods. Sales representatives are paid commissions based on sales. Commissions must be paid based on the home office location for customers. For example, commission for a customer that is headquartered in the Western United States is paid to the West group of sales representatives.
- Sales representatives are responsible for driving new business. Company executives must be able to see metrics that define the companies that the sales representatives are targeting, where there is potential to do business, and where quotes are being generated. Customer records must not be created until a sale is confirmed.
- The sales team quoted a new perfume for a customer named Customer1. The customer has shipping locations in the following regions: United States, Austria, and Japan. Sales must only be made to the US and Japan due to product ingredients. Automated checks must be put into place so that users do not have to remember to select the correct item.
Requirements. Testing
- The company periodically performs testing on ceramicware as it is received to determine whether the products contain lead. The company labels and markets ceramicware as Lead Free or Not for food use. Perfumes may contain restricted ingredients that cannot be sold to customers in the European Union. The company performs testing on perfumes and has processes to ensure that perfumes containing restricted ingredients are not sold to customers in Europe.
- Ten percent of all ceramicware items received must be tested for lead. The process for managing testing must be automated. There must be tolerances setup that define the acceptable amount of lead levels in a product.
Requirements. Inventory management
- The inventory team must control costing of items by using FIFO principles. The finance team must be able to see updated FIFO adjustments throughout the month but will only settle FIFO for month-end reporting.
- Inventory close must be run at the end of each month. A report must be provided to the finance team that includes the physical quantities and inventory value for items, with totals at the bottom. The warehouse team needs a similar report but does not want the inventory value included. During inventory close, some items cannot be fully costed because the issue cannot be settled against the receipt. The finance team must know which items were excluded.
Other inventory requirements
- Inventory must be reserved against physical inventory.
- Items must be grouped so that the inventory costing can posted to the ledger by using the following groups: perfumes, ceramicware, other goods. All goods are FIFO. Financial reports must be grouped by these three categories, even though transactions from all categories post to the same ledger accounts.
- Wide World Importers plans to import a specific type of pottery from a local company in Mexico that handmakes the goods. The pottery must be available in orange or red colors. The cost is the same regardless of the color selection.
- A new line of perfumes is being introduced. The procurement team must be able to identify which perfumes are men's or women's fragrances, and must be able to further categorize perfumes as Perfume, Eau de Perfume, Eau de Toilette, Eau de Cologne, or Eau Fraiche.
- You must set up a structure of products for classifying each item for purchase, sales, and reporting analysis.
Issue
- Customer service representatives report that some inventory shows as ordered reserved when the ordered reserved parameter is turned off.
- An item that is typically carried is out of stock. A customer named Customer2 wants to place a special rush order for the item. This will result in a significantly increased cost from the supplier. The finance team does not want to have this special order affect the FIFO tiers.