If you need to increase your business’s reach for delivering products, make your supply chain more visible and traceable, or just apply automation to some tedious tasks in the manufacturing-to-delivery pipeline, it may be time to invest in enterprise distribution software — a powerful solution for any business to improve their supply chain process.

Compare Top Distribution Software Leaders

In this article, we’ll review the features and benefits of several top-of-the-line enterprise distribution software options identified by our research team. By the end, you should be have a good idea of what’s out there and which solutions have the most to offer your business.

The Best Enterprise Distribution Software

SelectHub’s picks for the top enterprise distribution software on the market are all powerful cloud-based suites, suitable for different markets and sizes of business. Read on to see what we recommend!

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud

Based on SAP’s well-regarded HANA database management system, the latest iteration of their Business Suite software uses the cloud to empower your supply chain from beginning to end. It’s most suitable for large businesses and works on a subscription model to make it as easy as possible to get started.

Trace your company progress over time with SAP S/4 HANA’s easy-to-read graphs.

Top Benefits

• Budget Management: SAP S/4 HANA Cloud allows users to upload external budgets into the system and transfer them between different entities within your business.
• External Support: SAP handles updates, patches and support through their own IT service, giving you more personnel and resources to dedicate to your business.
• Customizability: Get insights into your supply chain performance at a glance by putting together a custom dashboard that only shows the information you need to know.
• Versatility: S/4 HANA can store data from both homogeneous and heterogeneous databases, ensuring you’ll only need one software solution to handle everything.
• Item Analytics: View and customize the settings of any single item type in your inventory, such as which vendors are allowed access to it.

Primary Features

• Supply Chain Planning: SAP S/4 HANA enables businesses to plan ahead of time how they want their supply chain to flow. Calculate cost and service trade-offs, manage available raw materials and resources, and track and review the performance of each of your products.
• Procurement: Create purchase orders and integrate both manual and automatic purchases to make sure everything is tracked as it needs to be. SAP S/4 HANA also helps you set reorder points so those automatic purchases can happen exactly when they’re needed most.
• Supply Chain Execution: Manage the flow of materials from your dashboard and automate the warehousing process to save time and personnel. You can also analyze your process in real time and use machine learning to inform your decisions.
• Marketing and Sales Management: SAP S/4 HANA lets you analyze purchasing trends and product performance to help your business stay on top of supply and demand. Make informed decisions on which products deserve the most attention with readable graphs and visualizations.
• Service Management: Manage manufacturing facilities, warehouses and deliveries from a single location, and schedule repairs and workarounds when machinery breaks down or there’s a service outage.

Limitations

• Can’t capture tax data from all regions.
• Doesn’t support all SQL functions.
• Doesn’t have a free version.

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Acumatica Distribution

Acumatica offers several different versions of its flagship ERP product, and the distribution edition is perfect for businesses of any size to get their feet wet with supply chain software. With a cloud subscription model and applications available for mobile devices as well, you’ll never be in a place where you can’t manage your distribution.

Acumatica consolidates all necessary information into a single dashboard.

Top Benefits

• Automatic Updates: Using Acumatica’s included IT services enables the software to receive automatic patches and upgrades as soon as they are needed.
• International Support: Acumatica allows for businesses using different languages and currencies to consolidate their operations into a single dashboard.
• Easy Exporting: Whether you’re transferring data between systems or need to submit it for auditing, Acumatica makes it simple to generate reports and share databases.
• Visibility: Acumatica enables tracking of your supply chain progress and cross-departmental communication to make sure goals are properly set.
• Machine Learning: Acumatica analyzes product performance and trends to make suggestions for upselling, price changes and item substitutions that can assist in customer retention.

Primary Features

• Warehouse Management: Acumatica supports automated picking and shipping, and can easily identify the most convenient warehouse to the customer to minimize shipping time and costs.
• Inventory Management: Acumatica lets users set automatic reorder points so stocks are replenished when they need to be, and makes it easier than ever to trace perishable items’ shelf lives.
• Order Management: Acumatica supports the creation of both individual and blanket purchase orders, and helps allocate costs of shipping and handling depending on a number of factors.
• Accounting: Acumatica supports management and sharing of multiple databases, populating them automatically as transactions occur and eliminating much of the possibility for typos.
• Service Management: Acumatica supports communication between employees and technicians to schedule equipment installations and repairs when necessary.

Limitations

• It doesn’t offer a free trial.
• The system doesn’t allow changing more than one item at a time for each location.
• It doesn’t provide an action tab on the print screen to save data.

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NetSuite ERP

NetSuite uses Oracle technology to empower its enterprise distribution software solution, ensuring you can entrust your most delicate warehouse operations to its automation functions and cloud platform. With the right developers on board, NetSuite is also customizable to whatever your business needs may be.

NetSuite makes manufacturing and repair requests easy to schedule and track.

Top Benefits

• Multi-Project Tracking: NetSuite gives users the ability to juggle multiple projects at once, ensuring they can handle several distribution tasks at the same time in a fast-paced work environment.
• Statement Consolidation: NetSuite allows you to monitor multiple business subsidiaries at the same time, and supports reporting on all of them at once in the same statement.
• Customer Funneling: Maximize your marketing efforts by using NetSuite’s lead tracing features, allowing you to track customers from prospects to final sales.
• Multi-Currency Support: NetSuite enables you to handle operations in many different regions, translating amounts into different currencies with minimal external input.
• Decreased Costs: NetSuite automatically minimizes the number of times goods are moved within a warehouse in order to keep costs of goods sold down.

Primary Features

• Financial Management: NetSuite offers real-time access to financial and operational performance while also automating the flow of transactions.
• Inventory Management: NetSuite enables users to trace inventory across several different channels and avoid stockouts by automatically reordering supplies when necessary.
• CRM: Directly interface with customers to address concerns and maintain transparency. NetSuite also tracks customer data for demographics and trends analysis.
• E-Commerce Management: NetSuite gives users a single source of customer, order and inventory data used for websites to provide an engaging online experience.
• Warehouse Management: NetSuite supports picking, packing and shipping automation, as well as minimizing shipping costs and prioritizing deliveries by warehouse location.

Limitations

• It requires an external vendor/supplier to configure.
• It doesn’t offer a free trial.

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Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP

Oracle’s own proprietary solution for your enterprise distribution software needs is built for medium to larger businesses, delivering a cloud-based, computer-driven suite of applications to cover all the supply chain bases. It covers your financial and accounting needs as well with a robust set of revenue-tracking modules.

Oracle Fusion Cloud uses years of experience and development to deliver a robust distribution solution.

Top Benefits

• Role-Based Security: Customize access for your employees so information doesn’t leak out, and grant partial access to external parties to maintain business transparency.
• Compliance: Maintain good standing with regulatory bodies by using Oracle Fusion Cloud’s data protection and privacy features.
• Automated Alerts: Receive instant updates upon any suspicious activity occurring so you can address it immediately.

Primary Features

• Financial Management: Oracle Fusion Cloud handles accounting needs through an enterprise-wide chart of accounts and a highly usable general ledger database.
• Fulfillment Management: This feature is your hub for scheduling and managing inbound and outbound shipments, cross-docking and flow-through allocations. It also enables you to deliver value-added services.
• Inventory Management: Get an aggregated view of your entire inventory on a single dashboard, as well as support for multiple different inventory tasks all at the same time.
• B2B and B2C: Oracle Fusion Cloud supports both B2B and D2C fulfillment by allocating inventory into outbound loads with multi-stop routes.
• Omnichannel Management: Cover all of your sales channels from a single location and give customers the ability to manage their purchases both online and in person.

Limitations

• It doesn’t offer a native mobile application.
• It doesn’t offer a free version.

Compare Top Distribution Software Leaders

SYSPRO ERP

The most flexible option on our list in terms of deployment methods, SYSPRO gives users the choice between hosting their enterprise distribution software on-site or allowing the developers to handle it on a subscription-based cloud platform. They also offer the SYSPRO Espresso mobile application for phones and tablets to give users access regardless of where they may be.

Easily create and edit tasks using SYSPRO’s simple editing functions.

Top Benefits

• Customizability: SYSPRO enables users to set the look and flow of their working environment to best fit both individual and company needs.
• Copying Order Data: When repeated orders occur, SYSPRO allows users to reuse the data from a previous order to minimize the time taken to create and fill out an order request.
• Role-Based Security: Businesses can rest easy knowing that SYSPRO users will only have access to the information they have been authorized to access.
• Microsoft SQL: Users can make custom SQL requests to access data through SYSPRO’s integration with Microsoft SQL services.
• Goal Tracking: Users can trace business progress against goals and performance metrics using SYSPRO’s automatic data entry and visualization capabilities.

Primary Features

• Supplier-Customer Collaboration: SYSPRO makes it easier than ever to maintain an open line of communication with your customers and your suppliers in order to improve relationships and resupply when necessary.
• Merchandise Tracking: Maintain transparency of every item’s progress from creation to final delivery, and share that progress with distributors and customers to improve transparency.
• Replenishment: Set automated restocking points and custom KPIs so your business can perform as intended and your supplies never run below a certain level.
• Inter-Warehouse Transfers: SYSPRO supports comprehensive control over variance, quantity and cost to minimize the number of times items are moved from warehouse to warehouse.
• Return Management: When customers need to return or exchange an item, SYSPRO supports visibility and tracking of those items. It can also help when your business needs to send items back to a supplier.

Limitations

• It doesn’t offer a free trial.
• Notes don’t have spell check and aren’t searchable.

Compare Top Distribution Software Leaders

How We Choose Products

Our team of writers and analysts at SelectHub is committed to giving you the best recommendations based on our data. To make our list, products had to meet two criteria:

1. Closely match the topic
2. Earn a top-5 analyst score in our selection platform

Our analyst scores are based on an in-depth research process using primary and secondary sources. This includes SelectHub Analyst Briefings, direct communication with vendors, and reviewing materials such as user reviews, product brochures, specification sheets, case studies, user manuals, and technical documentation.

Our platform’s Scoring Engine processes the research and computes the analyst score. The score also factors in platform settings such as industry and company size.

Learn more about our research methodology and editorial standards

Next Steps

While there are many more enterprise distribution solutions on the market than what we covered here, you might just find the right fit for your company in our top picks. If you’d like more information, take a look at our free comparison report to gain insight into even more top software leaders.

What problems could enterprise distribution software address in your company? Let us know in the comments below.