Is Your Ecommerce Process For Order Management Really As Automated As Possible?

Ecommerce

The eCommerce industry is on fire right now … metaphorically speaking.

When the global pandemic forced everyone into their homes and made in-store shopping feel like a health risk, businesses all over the world realized that they had to either start selling goods online or close up shop.

Basically, if you weren’t an eCommerce company before, you had to become one quick.

What’s particularly interesting is that some companies thought their order management processes were already automated and capable of handling new levels of demand. But when their technology was put to the test, their “automated” process still ended up requiring a lot of manual steps — steps contributing to wasted time and resources that add up quickly.

You may think your eCommerce business is as automated as possible, but there’s a chance you’re still missing out on order management efficiencies that you can take right to the bank, and ways to better serve your valued customers. Here’s a great example of this exact situation.

A few months back an eCommerce client asked if we could review their order entry process. They didn’t really think there was much room for order entry improvement but had a mandate to improve the customer experience and decrease operating costs.

The conversation started like this:

Can you tell me about your orders? Have you taken any steps toward automation?

Client: Oh, we’ve already got that. We have clients set up to order online and we also have EDI. It’s only a small amount of orders that are still coming in via email.

Sounds like you’ve really made some strides in getting order automation in place. Can you tell me about your online ordering?

Client: Yes, the orders are entered by customers online. Those orders come into our ERP system and that puts them into an order management queue. From there, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team pulls them up and clears any errors. Then they process them for fulfillment.

And, how about your EDI orders?

Client: EDI orders come in and route automatically to that same order management queue. They follow a similar process.

From the outside (and the inside) it may seem like the company has automated these functions. What we discovered was the process that the team must go through to work the order management queue is particularly tedious. It has been the cause of numerous order errors and becomes an even larger challenge when the team has any turnover.

This is the reality of the company’s process at the order management queue level:

No visibility to the actual fields that the customer had filled in during order entry
Difficulty reading the original EDI file that was received
CSR was spending just as much time working these orders as they were entering orders that were being submitted via emails

Given that, we started talking about the orders that were still coming in via email.

The emailed orders arrive and come into a generic customer service mailbox. The team manages orders to be processed through a series of shared email inboxes where they are distributed. The CSRs know their accounts well and can process these orders based on the refined processes they have developed throughout the year.

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Of the 12,000 orders, they receive each month, only 28% arrive via email and fax. In addition, the client had a big problem when having to go back to their key customers for their annual partner performance reviews. One of the contract requirements was that orders need to be processed within 6 hours of reception. The reality was, that they had no way to report on this. From the time the order arrives until the order is created in the ERP is a blind spot for the organization

With automation, web, EDI, email, and fax orders arrive electronically and can be tracked and processed with a full record of all of the original field entries. They have the advantage of tracking any changes that the team makes during the final order creation process.

Now the Business Analyst that was responsible for the project is able to highlight a wide array of points in the business case that was submitted to support the project.

Points that were included:

The expected improvement of 45-65% in time to process an order
100% visibility to all orders in the order queue - previously had zero visibility into this
Full audit trail of documents from the moment that they enter the company whether it’s from EDI, web entry, fax, or email
The supply chain team can monitor the orders that are waiting to be processed, allowing for them to plan more proactively
Giving staff time to pursue a few key projects that are expected to increase revenue. The expected value of this increased revenue is in excess of $100,000 per quarter
Automation of monthly dashboard reports for the executive committee. Previously, there was a staff member who had to prepare these each month and it took almost 30 hours each month to complete this task.
A defined competitive advantage that they could deliver to their customers - something they believe will help increase revenue and bring in more customers.

Interested in augmenting your eCommerce process, learn more at esker.com!

About the Author

Caitlyn Riedl: As a Marketing Manager at Esker, Caitie works on marketing campaigns for fax and accounts payable automation solutions.

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