Value-Added Services 

UseSome of your customers might request that you add customer-specific services to the goods

they ordered before they are delivered. Customers frequently request special labels, packing

according to certain criteria, or other special services for their goods.

Depending on what kind of service and how complicated it is, you will need materials, know-

how and/or more personnel to provide the service. An added service that you provide upon

customer demand is therefore not free of charge, but rather it increases the value of the

goods that you will deliver. You can calculate price markups that your customer has to pay,

to reimburse you for your resources and materials.

You can map these requirements including their costs as value-added services in the AFS

system. To do so, you define the requested services with the corresponding price markups

and assign them to your customers and their purchase orders either in the order or by using

conditions. This way you always have the information about which services which customer

wants for which goods at which cost during the complete customer-order process. You can

also instruct your warehouse precisely as to which tasks they are to perform before

delivering the goods. It is also possible to transfer this data to external systems that control

the additional services by using a number of freely definable, informational fields.

 

Make sure that the value-added services are carried out in your

warehouse shortly before the goods are delivered. Normally this would

only consist of activities that do not require much effort. More

extensive activities, such as attaching size or designer labels would

already be included in the production of the goods or would be done in

a specially outfitted distribution center.

This function is best used if you have a lot of customers for whom you

generally provide special small services. For more complex demands,

such as adding or combining materials, you may wish to consider other

functions, such as bills of materials or

prepacks and assortments. 

FeaturesThere are three groups of value-added services in the AFS System:

ticketing/labeling

packing

special service

Ticketing/Labeling

Here you define ticketing/labeling types to group all those value-added services that are

involved in labeling your customers‘ goods before delivery. A customer may provide you the

complete labels or you may produce them in your warehouse according to your customer‘s

wishes.

Shortly before a sale, a customer ordered the remainders of men’s and

ladies‘ shirts from you, to be delivered straight to a department store.

The customer wants to offer the shirts at reduced prices. You are asked

to affix a large label to each shirt, that shows the original sales price in

normal black lettering crossed out, and below it in large red lettering

the reduced sales price. Slacks and skirts have their own prices.

dependent on size. The reduction is to be 20% off the original

customer sales price.

For this you define a ticketing/labeling type Attach sales

ticket/label in Customizing and use text types to assign all necessary

specifications, such as customer sales price per grid value of the

material, the 20% reduction = new customer sales price. For providing

the added service, you charge your customer a 1.5% markup per item

of the purchase order.

In the order, you specify this ticketing/labeling type and your charge

code for each item. With the information in the text types, you could

then create the labels in your warehouse via an external system and

have them attached to the garments.

Packing

Here you define packing types to group all value-added services your customer expects you

to provide for packing the materials in a special way before delivery. The customer may

provide special packing material (for example cartons with the company logo) or you create

them yourself in your warehouse according to your customer’s wishes.

Your customer may even specify how their order is packed in the cartons. In the system you

can map special requests, such as separate packing of ladies‘ and men’s clothing, sorting

the goods by dimensions (for example by size or color), via mix indicators which you then

assign in the application per packing type.

A customer orders slacks and skirts and wants to receive them packed

separately. Since the skirts are made of a more delicate material, you

are asked to pack no more than ten in one carton. This you can specify

in the system by defining a packing type VP1 (slacks and skirts

separated) and a mix indicator, such as M1 (maximum number of skirts

per carton = 10). In the application, you assign VP1 to the relevant

materials and also specify M1 for this packing type.

Special Service

Here you the define special service types to group any possible other types of value-added

services that may occur in your company.

Another customer orders slacks and skirts of a higher price category

plus the same number of belts in matching sizes. The customer wants

you to deliver the garments with belts already inserted. For this you

define a special service type Insert belt and specify this in the order.

Activities Define your value-added services and price units in Customizing.

Create the corresponding conditions for the value-added services.

If necessary, create the materials that are required for certain value-added services, whether because

you yourself need them on a regular basis, or because the customer provides them to you for the

purchase orders and you want to know when to contact the customer for additional supplies.

Instruct your employees in the warehouse which services are required for which key.