Blog Post
Industrial B2B manufacturers and distributors need to move at lightning speed, yet many companies still rely on manual processes for order management. Currently, 49.3% of B2B orders are sent manually via email. Rewriting data to your ERP is a manual task that slows down order management and introduces data entry errors ranging from 1% to 4% of keystrokes.
With customers demanding consumer-grade order fulfillment, there’s no room for inefficiency or inaccuracy anywhere in the order management process. This challenge isn’t just about processing orders swiftly but delivering exceptional customer experiences, optimizing inventory management, and ultimately staying competitive in a marketplace defined by speed and precision.
Fortunately, automated order management solutions can radically improve how businesses manage orders. In this post, we’ll explore the intricacies of automated order management solutions and uncover how they can streamline operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase profitability.
TL;DR:
- Manual order management processes are slow and prone to errors, hindering customer satisfaction and competitiveness in the digital economy.
- Automated order management solutions streamline operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase profitability.
- The order management process includes receiving the order, processing it accurately, preparing the order for shipment, shipping the order, and handling returns.
- Specific steps in the order management process, such as order data entry, validation, and document generation, can be easily automated to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.
- Benefits of automated order management include improved customer experience, expedited fulfillment, better visibility into inventory, improved accuracy, increased productivity, reduced labor costs, elimination of manual entry, and improved scalability.
What is Automated Order Management?
Automated order management is using automated technology to manage customer orders from order capture to inventory management, shipping, and order tracking. Automated order management solutions improve inventory management, reduce human errors, and make ordering easier for customers. They also help contribute to customer satisfaction by not having any mistakes.
Think of order management as the rate-limiting step in a chemical reaction. It is the slowest step, and it controls the overall reaction rate. If your order management system is slow, the entire rest of the ordering process will also be slow– and today’s customers have no patience for slow order processing. An automated order management system will increase this rate limit for faster, smoother orders.
The Order Management Process
Order management is a complex process with several critical steps. These steps include receiving the initial order, processing it accurately, prepping the product for shipment, executing a reliable shipping process, and being equipped to handle returns effectively.
Receiving the Order
The first step in order management happens once a customer makes a purchase. Next, the seller acknowledges the order’s arrival, verifies its accuracy, and records essential order details, such as product type, quantity, and shipping information. With 49.3% of B2B orders sent manually via email, quite often, this order information must be recorded manually.
Accuracy and efficiency at this stage are critical since discrepancies or errors can ripple downstream, leading to customer dissatisfaction and logistical complications. Building an effective receiving order process ensures a foundation for a successful transaction.
Processing the Order
After the order is received, order processing begins. During this phase, the order’s details are meticulously reviewed, and various checks and validations are performed. Manual order processing is expensive and riddled with the risk of human error, contributing to high overhead costs and challenging quality control measures. On average, it costs $30 to manually process a single sales order (Zinnov), significantly inflating operational costs when handling large quantities of orders.
Automated order entry at this stage of order management minimizes human error, accelerates order processing times, and creates more time for customer service. Conexiom’s order management solution automated order processing in minutes rather than hours, revolutionizing this critical stage of order processing.
Preparing the Order
During this stage, ordered products are gathered, inspected, and packed for shipment to the customer. Once items are found in inventory, they must be checked to ensure that they align with the order details. Efficient and precise order preparation ensures that customers receive exactly what they ordered.
Shipping the Order
After the order is packed, it’s time to ship it to the customer. This phase isn’t just about getting products from point A to point B; it also plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction. Today’s customers expect fast, painless shipping with products delivered right to their door in perfect condition. Effective order shipping ensures that products arrive on time, contributing to a positive customer experience. Once the product is on the truck, the order process is predominantly out of your hands… unless there is a need for the customer to return the order.
Handling Returns
Customers have many reasons for returning products, and being able to handle returns effectively maintains their satisfaction and trust. You must provide clear return instructions, facilitate a straightforward return process, inspect returned items for quality and restocking conditions, and issue refunds or replacements promptly. It is a critical customer service aspect and can significantly impact your reputation. Even if a customer is dissatisfied with a product, a well-managed returns process can turn a challenging customer experience into an opportunity to showcase dedication to customer care and problem resolution.
What Steps in the Order Management Process are the Easiest to Automate?
While human involvement will always be needed during the order management process, a strategic company will use its employees carefully. The most efficient businesses refocus their customer service teams on higher-value tasks and leave the repetitive tasks to automation. Specific steps are particularly well suited to order management automation due to their repetitive nature and reliance on data. These include automating order data entry, validation, and document generation, as well as real-time inventory tracking with automatic reorder triggers, streamlined shipping label creation, and tracking, and simplified returns processing. Automation in these areas significantly reduces manual effort, enhances accuracy, and boosts overall order management efficiency.
Benefits of Automated Order Management
The benefits of automated order management are comprehensive and immediate, transforming profitability, speed, and accuracy. Let’s review the main benefits of leveraging an automated order management solution.
1. Improve Customer Experience
The most valuable person in the ordering process is your customer. You should optimize your order processing in a way that’s oriented towards improving customer experience. Customers want their orders processed immediately and fulfilled quickly, and of course, they want the order to be accurate and on-time. According to new research from Thrv and Conexiom, CSRs spend 25% of their day on data entry instead of talking to customers.
Automating order management enables employees to spend their time and energy focused on providing the best customer service possible. With Conexiom’s automated order management solution, Revere Electric Supply saved 95% of the original time spent on order processing, which they now dedicate to their customer service.
2. Expedite Fulfillment
Slow order processing delays the entire ordering process. When you invest in an automated order management system, order fulfillment can happen more quickly. This is especially helpful for companies with extensive inventories, like Werner Electric Supply, whose expansive inventory contains more than 24,000 different SKUs to choose from. Automated order management helped them streamline order cycle time and reduce errors.
3. Provide Better Visibility into Inventory
Order management automation enhances inventory visibility by continuously tracking stock levels in real-time, providing instant access to accurate product quantities, locations, and movement data. This real-time information enables businesses to make informed decisions, optimize stock replenishment, and ensure that out-of-stock items are updated before customers try to order them. For companies like Edwards Garment, automation helps them accurately process more than 500 daily orders that were previously coming in via email and fax alone.
4. Improve Accuracy
Automation ensures that everything in the order is correct the first time. Conexiom pulls data directly from emails to create purchase orders that are entirely accurate. Gone are the days of needing to retype orders; firms like Rexel save thousands of hours on labor thanks to the accuracy introduced with order management automation.
5. Increase Productivity
Order management automation increases productivity by efficiently handling repetitive and time-consuming tasks, freeing up human resources for more value-added activities. It also minimizes errors and reduces the need for manual intervention, resulting in faster and more consistent task execution. Sonepar traded their OCR order processing system for Conexiom, which allowed them to automate over 200,000 lines of text monthly, leading to lower labor costs, less rework, and better productivity all around.
6. Reduce Labor Costs
An automated order management system requires an up-front cost, but there’s no salary or benefits to worry about. Your employees can spend less time on tedious, repetitive tasks and focus on what they’re truly good at, while the organization can save money and not hire unnecessarily for order processing. To see how this may look for your company, learn how Woodhill Supply expanded its workload and capacity without hiring new team members.
7. Eliminate Manual Entry
Order processing automation replaces most manual entry and reduces the need for human operators to input order details manually. This speeds up the order processing workflow and significantly reduces the risk of data entry errors, leading to more accurate and efficient order management. For some companies, like Swagelok, this has cut over 40 hours of manual entry per week, freeing up employees for value-added tasks.
8. Improve Scalability
With an automated order management system, companies can scale up or down without worrying about hiring and firing. Order automation ensures that order processes can effortlessly adapt and accommodate higher order volumes or increased complexity as businesses grow, maintaining operational efficiency and flexibility. For Van Meter, automation transformed the sales team as orders increased. Order accuracy went from 95% to 100%, and the company saw reduced errors and returns, even as they expanded.
Get Started With Automated Order Management
If you want the benefits of automated order management, Conexiom is your solution. Conexiom can automate the most tedious and complex parts of the process that would require manual data entry or validation. This dramatically reduces errors and lets your sales staff work where they excel: interacting with customers and keeping them happy. For a faster, more straightforward sales process, look no further than Conexiom for your automation needs.