Microarea Community talk: delivery date per item in supplier’s quotation

by Sonia Zarino –  Marketing & Communication Manager

Active for almost two months, Microarea Community is proving to be a virtual rendezvous, popular with users and partners where they can exchange information and suggestions of any kind which, as in the case below, translate into product improvements and actively contribute to their technical and commercial development.

It all started with an observation by a final user who pointed out that in the electronics sector, the suppliers, not wishing to tie up goods (and therefore capital) in storage with the possible risk of not selling the products, often purchase materials only after having received an order from a customer.

Frequently electronic items must be imported and have delivery times of various lengths. Our user noted that in most cases each individual item has a different delivery date to the other items, although these are all part of the same order.

The proposal put forward by our sharp user was that it should be possible to insert the date of delivery of each single item in the “Supplier Quotation” screen. The idea being that when a quotation is received, it would be possible to save the delivery date of each item, generating a “self-updating” Excel spreadsheet thanks to Magic Documents, where all the information on the delivery dates proposed could be merged.

Microarea saw value in our user’s suggestion and launched a process known as Product Improvement to implement this new functionality, which will be released in a future version.

The topic proposed in this posting gave rise to various comments and another user, having observed that the problem experienced in the electronic field is also common in the mechanical sector, has suggested including the further possibility of linking the quoted price with the delivery date.

The collaborative process of shared analysis and development of our product is already bearing fruit and we are certain that the Community will be a valuable tool in this sense, continuously contributing new points of view to the future designs of our product, improving performance and accessibility on the basis of the real needs of the users.