Anyone in consumer goods knows this story too well — a high-demand SKU, a golden sales opportunity… lost, simply because the product wasn’t available on the shelf.
The irony? The brand didn’t even know about it.
This is where Secondary Stock & Sales Visibility becomes mission-critical. Without it, you’re flying blind beyond the primary sale. You can’t fix what you can’t see — and in today’s competitive environment, that visibility isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.
Why Secondary Visibility Matters
A well-functioning secondary tracking system helps brands:
- Prevent stock-outs and revenue loss
- Improve forecasting with real-time data
- Strengthen distributor relationships through transparency
- Ensure operational efficiency across the supply chain
Most companies have tried to address this gap — initially through manual data collection (read: Excel files) which, as expected, leads to delayed and inaccurate reporting.
Enter DMS (Distributor Management Systems) — positioned as the answer to these challenges. It promised to capture secondary sales, manage distributor claims, track inventory, and streamline order processing.
In theory, it should’ve worked beautifully. And in some cases, it has.
Where DMS Works (and Where It Doesn’t)
We’ve seen DMS succeed in environments where:
- Distributors are exclusive to the brand, or
- The brand has major share-of-wallet in the distributor’s business
But here’s the reality: most brands today don’t operate like that.
In a VUCA world, businesses are intentionally moving away from exclusive distributor arrangements — and rightly so. It lowers brand risk, and delivers better ROI for distributors. But it also makes enforcing DMS adoption in multi-brand outlets (MBOs) a losing battle.
Why DMS Adoption Is Failing at Scale
Let’s call out the key reasons:
- Double work for distributors – They need to maintain a parallel billing system on DMS and their existing software like Tally or Busy.
- Data mismatches – What’s in DMS often doesn’t match the accounting books.
- Broken integrations – DMS-to-Tally imports miss accounting nuances like taxation, leading to rework and unreliability.
- No one-size-fits-all – Tally implementations vary widely; most DMS platforms struggle to accommodate the diversity.
The result? Distributors resist. Data quality suffers. The brand ends up with patchy adoption and blind spots in execution.
What We Need Instead
It’s time to stop forcing square pegs into round holes.
We need a distributor-first approach — one that fits into their existing systems rather than replacing them. One that ensures:
- High-quality, reliable data
- Seamless two-way sync with accounting tools like Tally
- Minimal friction for distributor onboarding
- Scalable adoption across exclusive and non-exclusive channels
Only then can brands build a flexible, future-proof supply chain that actually delivers on the promise of visibility and control.
If you’re in consumer goods and struggling with DMS fatigue, you’re not alone. But the answer isn’t to give up — it’s to rethink the approach.
DMS isn’t dead. But it needs a serious reboot.
Let’s make it work for distributors, not against them.
