From products to services
Traditionally, retail is focused on selling products. In addition, we see a trend toward selling services. This plays out, for example, with products that require some form of assembly. Like hanging your blinds, hanging your new front door, or assembling a closet. Who doesn’t know the television commercial about Hubo’s lovable craftsman who comes to your home.
This combination of products and services places special demands on workflow automation. It is no longer enough to manage EAN codes. It also involves quotations, measurements, down payments, partial deliveries and route planning. There are specialized solutions for that but they are expensive, that can’t always work out. And then how do you monitor the consistency between products and services?
Working closely with EK DIY (formerly DGN Retail) and partners in the chain, Valk Solutions has expanded its platform for selling services. With relatively minor adjustments, we can support our customers in the do-it-yourself industry and possibly other industries to generate additional revenue from services.
Thijs Kwakkenbos, business consultant at Valk Solutions: “From the customer order, follow-up actions such as following up on quotations and monitoring down payments are automatically generated. Thanks to new filters in the customer order module, stores can work efficiently and keep an overview. The BI dashboard has been made suitable for monitoring the margin on services. And integrations with partners such as Outsmart, Bumbal, Woontotaal, Deli Home and others ensure a best of breed total solution for the customer.”
These new features are currently being put into use by the first customers. We look forward to hearing their experiences and feedback so we can continue to improve our platform!
Montfoort, November 2023
