The Zamboanga Plant, as in the other Plants, underwent difficulties during its first day of using the new Sales and Distribution system - here I refer to as the "Cutover". Everybody had a hard time coping up - even though the changes to transactions, and procedures have been communicated long way back, people still have the difficulty in adopting new things.

Very ironic since with this Client, the benefits of the Changes are immense, and these benefits have been proven in the previous roll-out of the new S&D system. As outlined in the blog post "The Painful Road to Change" (my previous post), these new procedures totally change the way Sales, Finance and Logistics do things. As indicated in the previous roll-outs, daily transaction closing efforts and time to be spent are improved 200 to 300%.

Sales people don't have to manually issue invoices to Customers, as these are generated by the new system. Manual computations and reconciliations are already a thing in the past, as the new system fully integrates all information using simple transactions.

The first day of the new system, the Cutover, was filled with so much animosity. But in the coming few days, these indifferences will surely fade away.

Imagine working starting at 6:30 in the morning, then meet with your delivery team to check if all of the customer deliveries for the day are complete, and make sure last minute instructions are communicated. Then prepare your daily Customer information sheets, including your Customer's credit standing, then off, you go your daily rounds as an Accounts Manager - or Salesman in ordinary lingo.

By mid-day, you cut short of your regular customer rounds and visit your customers who have deliveries that day - to issue invoices manually, meaning, using your pen and an invoice form, and write all the products delivered, the quantities, juggling on your calculator to arrive at discounts. Thus you should have all the info as to what a particular customer discount enjoys.

Then you collect cash or check for the deliveries. This you have to do in all customers with deliveries that day. By 6:00pm, you should be back in your office, to settle all your day's transactions, and collections. You should be happy if you're done early - at around 8:00 or 9:00pm, in most cases, due to the manual settlement transactions at Finance, you should be glad if you're done by 11:00pm.

Then, off you go home, kids are sleeping, then you doze off to dreamland. Then you wake up and start your day same as yesterday - and imagine doing that for years... Very interesting, indeed.

... To be continued...