Wholesale Distribution Application

Visual World is a Business Technology Platform that empowers our Clients to implement their business Vision

Visual World is a fundamentally different approach to how technology powers business.

The platform is built around business processes and is designed to be configured exactly to the specific needs of our clients – As the business strategy is implemented into the tactical operations of the day to day, Visual World business objects are mapped to the exact processes and individuals operating the system.

As the strategy and the tactical requirement changes, the system has been designed to be reconfigured to address those desired changes – Examples include:

• Locking in customers by adding additional functions via Sales Rep and Customer portals
• Rerouting work processes and flows based on changing internal operational needs
• Easily adding new product lines with all of the quoting, kitting, distribution and other rules
• Deeply integrating new online and/or offline marketing & promotional opportunities
• Easily addressing changes in distribution relationships, and more

Visual World takes this approach due to the new technological demands on business.

Software has moved from purely tactical considerations that focus only on helping a business account for its internal operations (“accounting packages“ of the 1980's & 1990's) into a strategic decision that includes deep electronic integration upstream into suppliers, and downstream into customers, and provides the flexibility for internal operations changes to allow businesses to adjust and keep pace with changes in the market. This approach to technology is powered by strategic software platforms and not tactical software programs.

Legacy Packaged Software versus modern Technology Platforms:

A packaged software program is like a scientific calculator. A user enters in the variables and gets a result. To change what the calculator does, you need to reprogram it. Businesses today spend untold sums to attempt to reprogram their software packages in order to achieve the most modest of changes, because this legacy approach to business technology is not inherently designed to accept deep, substantial changes.

An example of a technology platform is MS Excel.

In Excel, you can build a workbook with relationships and rules that you define based on your specific definition. You create the logic/rules, and Excel manages the result. If you want to change something, you don't reprogram Excel, you change the workbook. Adding a new formula, row or column, doesn't disrupt any pre-existing formulas or data. Excel manages this by separating out the engine, the data, and the logic.

MS Excel is an example of a mathematical technology platform. Visual World is a business technology platform. Like Excel creates extensible, changeable, worksheets that perform logical analysis based on user rules and definitions, Visual World creates an extensible, changeable, virtual world of business and processes based on user rules and definitions.

The Visual World difference:

We do this using our unique methodology and supporting business objects. Our business objects, to name a few – Cards, Forms, Trays, Calendars, Desks – are brought together to create a ”well formed business process“ that virtually mirrors their real world counter parts. Complete business processes are configured exactly as to our client definitions – As the needs of the business change – new markets, new customer requirements, new supplier requirements – the underlying business process changes are then reconfigured into the platform, without disrupting all of the already working componentry, much like inserting a column into an existing workbook in Excel.

Virtual Business Objects

Visual World contains a set of business objects that operate against a process engine. Each Visual World Business Object corresponds to a component of a real business:

• Cards are used to keep track of ”Things“ such as companies, people, products, vendors, etc.
• Forms are used to keep track of work. (see Well Formed Business Process Methodology). Forms can be sales order, service orders, loan applications, etc. Forms are ”pulled“ through a business process using Attraction Rules (see Trays below)
• Trays are used to pull instances of Forms through a business process. Each TRAY contains an Attraction Rule that ”attracts“ instances of Forms based on the ”state“ or ”status“ of the object within the process. When used with web services, Attraction Rules provide for ”just-in-time“ query to web service functions.

Using our technology platform, we have created the best in breed Wholesale Distribution Application that offers a range of functions and processes ”out of the box“ and then are configured to the exact definition of our clients.