Here at Tensoft, we’re always trying to find new solutions to handle the industry-specific needs of our customers. One recent example of this is Tensoft DemandOps, which we built based on customer feedback to deliver industry-specific functionality for semiconductor sales operations. More broadly, it’s designed to meet the needs of companies who sell through extended value chains or distribution channels.
Previously, we hosted a customer-exclusive webcast – What’s New in DemandOps – that covered some of the new and existing features in Tensoft DemandOps. Some of the recent features added are direct to customer email capabilities, revenue management tools, service part handling and enhanced audit log capabilities. Since this may be of interest to a wider audience, we have highlighted a few key functionalities below. (Tensoft customers can watch the full recording of this webcast on Tensoft Knowledge Base.)
Collect the Necessary Information on Your Sales Order
In this industry, the part information on orders can be complex. You may have customer parts and internal parts, or marketing part numbers with multiple internal parts. You may also need the customer and marketing part lookup based on the part entered at the time of order entry. The part numbers may be defined by a contract manufacturer, or a distributor, or an end customer. You may price your sales based on a quote or a rebate program, or a price list, or price history with a customer. You may need to collect information about both the sell-to customer and the end customer on your order. All this information needs to work together, both in the sales order and throughout the demand management and order-to-invoice process.
Booking and Order Change Management
Bookings drive your business, and visibility of bookings to all interested parties is an important part of this role. Bookings are more than capturing the original order though – they are also about capturing change. Change history for your order and bookings information are captured through the order publishing process with no additional effort or configuration required and these changes can be viewed by user changes by admin users.
Advanced Shipping Functionality
Standard practice for many companies is to have the customer pay for their own shipping, which means that you need to manage complex shipping terms and accounts specific to each customer. You may have scenarios where third parties pay for the shipping or there are re-shippers. It may be that the general terms for shipping are captured for the customer and the order but need to change based on shipment specific information. Tensoft DemandOps captures and simplifies the process of managing and transmitting this information to the shipping process. It has the capability of capturing customer specific shipping terms.
Streamlined Order to Invoice Process
When Tensoft DemandOps is used with Tensoft SemiOps you get a full order management process for the industry. Order management captures what the customer wants and communicates key information internally and externally to your organization. Scheduling management includes the operations team in the process for commit date management and on time Delivery tracking. Shipping management, based on the full set of information about the order and shipping needs, including the ability to support outsourced fulfillment efforts, streamlines what is often a cluttered and error prone communication process. Invoicing against the full set of information captured in the order to invoice process streamlines the customer acceptance and validation of your invoices.
Enhanced Revenue Management Calculations
The latest revenue standards – ASC 606 in the US and IFRS 15 for the rest of the world – require the same revenue standards for this industry. Revenue is recognized on shipment of goods to customers, but the revenue recognized needs to reflect the estimated final selling price for the goods. In an industry where there are rebates and other incentives for the channel (ship and debit agreements) this is a significant challenge. A related challenge is to ensure the management team has an accurate expectation on the bookings impact on future revenue.
Tensoft DemandOps includes the ability to identify customers and customer parts as eligible for rebates and the estimated net price percent expected for each. It can show you an estimated net booking and a total booking at the same time. The ability to support design win rebate models with distributors, end customer rebates and incentives, or other business value chain impacts on the final selling price is a significant help to your financial team for monthly reporting.
Import, Integration, and APIs
Tensoft DemandOps includes data import capabilities to enable rapid on-boarding for a new customer. It also allows you to download the existing data and then upload to modify or create some master data and sales transactions.
Easy Integration with Other ERP Applications
The enhanced DemandOps REST APIs allow easier integration with other external business system applications. This includes – but is not limited to – Tensoft SemiOps, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
To learn about additional features and benefits of DemandOps, view our fact sheet here.