Orders should move. People shouldn’t have to push them.
POs come in. Orders get entered. Stock gets checked. Customers ask questions. Warehouses need answers. Invoices go out.
The business may already have an ERP.
That doesn’t mean the work between the steps is going smoothly.
WHERE DOES THE FRICTION USUALLY HIDE?
A customer emails a PO as a PDF.
Someone opens it and types the same information into the ERP.
Pricing doesn’t match, so the order stops.
An SKU is unclear, and somebody sends an email.
The customer asks for order status. Someone checks two systems and calls the warehouse.
Sales keeps its own spreadsheet because the ERP doesn’t show what they need.
An order changes after it has already started moving.
One exception turns into six emails and three people.
HOW THE BUSINESS FLOWS
Inquiry /
Quote
manual pricing • slow answers • repeated lookup
PO
email attachments • PDFs • different customer formats
Sales
Order
retyping • validation • pricing exceptions
Fulfillment
stock questions • substitutions • changes
Shipment
status requests • tracking handoffs
Invoice
missing information • manual triggers
Payment
follow-up • reconciliation • exceptions
COMMON PROBLEMS WE LOOK AT
Another PO. Another retyping job.
Orders arrive as PDFs, spreadsheets, emails, and customer-specific forms. Somebody has to turn all of that into clean sales orders. Every day.
Quotes shouldn’t require archaeology.
Pricing lives in one place. Availability somewhere else. Customer history somewhere else again. Then somebody has to put the answer together.
The order shipped. Why is billing waiting?
A shipment can be physically complete while the information needed for invoicing is still catching up. That gap costs time.
The same problem pattern applies to shipment/order completion even though the master problem page uses broader “job completion” language.
A customer asked. Who’s answering?
New account inquiries, quote requests, and customer questions can arrive through email, forms, calls, and individual sales reps. The first response shouldn’t depend on who happens to see it.
Inquiry routing language can be used here while the destination remains the master A-tier page.
ONE REALISTIC WORKFLOW EXAMPLE
data are checked
move forward
go to a person
Sometimes this is a strong automation candidate.
Sometimes it isn’t. That’s what the first check is for.
DO YOU NEED TO REPLACE YOUR ERP?
A working ERP is usually something to build around, not something to rip out for fun.
The useful question is: Where does the information stop flowing?
- That may be between email and ERP.
- Between sales and warehouse.
- Between shipment and accounting.
- Between the customer and everybody.
We look there first.
WHAT MAKES SOMETHING WORTH LOOKING AT?
Good candidates usually involve work that:
- repeats at volume
- takes people away from useful decisions
- slows orders or responses
- creates retyping or copy/paste
- produces costly errors
- leaves a measurable trail
Ten minutes once a month? Leave it alone.
Ten minutes on every order? Now we’re interested.
DON'T SEE YOUR PROBLEM?
Distribution businesses are full of weird little processes.
- Customer-specific pricing.
- Special order rules.
- Vendor quirks.
- Spreadsheet workarounds.
- EDI that works for three customers but not the fourth.
A process doesn’t have to fit one of our examples to be worth fixing.
FIND YOUR PROBLEM →HOW IT STARTS
Start with the mess, not the software.
Show us
Show us what isn’t working.
Understand it
We look at the workflow, people, systems, data, volume, and exceptions.
Check it
Can this be improved? Would improving it actually be worth the money and effort?
Decide
