By john freech
Given today's competitive business climate and technological capabilities, companies must do more to improve order acquisition and fulfillment capabilities than simply applying more manpower. They must deploy solutions that support a growing desire on the part of customers for self-service, delivering processes that empower customers with the ability to execute and manage their buying experience with predictable and manageable results.
On the surface, this might seem a simple task for suppliers... all they have to do is deploy an eCommerce website with a shopping cart. While some companies have taken this step, many still have only one method of inputting new orders into back-end fulfillment systems... manual data entry. In addition to being an inefficient and expensive way to communicate new order information to the rest of the organization, this approach is fraught with potential for errors and delays in the order management workflow.
Companies looking for a competitive advantage need look no further than the methods and practices used to acquire, communicate, and fulfill orders. Here are three principles to consider when planning order acquisition and fulfillment strategies:
Empower customers with self-service shopping and/or order placement capabilities where possible. This applies to both consumer and business-to-business customers.
Integrate front-end order acquisition with back-end order management and fulfillment processes.
Keep customers informed of the progress of their order(s) through electronic order confirmations and online order status information.
In the past, these strategies have been accessible only to large companies with substantial information technology budgets and staff. But today, open systems and community-managed standards provide the ability to easily connect existing front and back-end systems without a lot of cost or time. Likewise, open-source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, which is not only affordable, but sometimes free, provides the ability to integrate all business functions into one seamlessly integrated system.
So, equipped with the knowledge that both the technologies and integrated workflow methods are within reach, let's look at ways to improve the customer's buying experience while streamlining the fulfillment process.
Self-Service Shopping Via eCommerce Sites
eCommerce sites provide manufacturers and distributors (suppliers) with the ability to design how the customer is exposed to product and service choices, using multimedia tools to offer variety in the customer's shopping and buying experience. This allows customers to follow the path they are most comfortable with in evaluating and choosing which products and services to buy. eCommerce portals can also facilitate order placement and tracking for customers who buy products and services on a regular basis without necessarily shopping, which is frequently the case with b2b customers. Here are some things to consider when looking at self-service eCommerce sites:
Todays customers love to be empowered with the ability to shop and purchase at will, and on their own schedule. Suppliers who recognize this, and are willing to place this capability into the hands of buyers, are far more likely to produce happy customers who enjoy the buying experience enough to return to the site frequently and buy more often.
Customers looking for education prior to making a buying decision can be presented with information in a variety of formats, including short videos, written tutorials, pictures charts, graphs, even music (depending on the product or service offering), followed by an opportunity to buy. In diversifying the modes and methods for delivering information to customers, suppliers can increase the probability that the customer will find useful information in a format they prefer, which facilitates their comfort level with the supplier's company and product offering.
Customers wishing to interact with suppliers prior to making a buying decision can be presented with multiple contact choices, including real-time chat, email and pre-sale telephone support, all reachable from the supplier's site.
Current information, product updates and contextual information about the supplier's company and products can be delivered by subject-matter experts through a web log, also known as a blog. This keeps the supplier's information fresh and its customers engaged, which also encourages them to come back to the site more often.
Customers looking for references, satisfaction reviews, or comments by other customers can be routed to the supplier's social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where credible feedback on the supplier's products and company is readily available, and interaction with and among customers can take place almost in real-time.
Integration With Fulfillment Systems
All of these factors serve to enhance the buying experience for the customer, which is a good thing. But there is a greater good at play in the use of these strategies as they pertain to order fulfillment. By empowering customers with self-service ordering, suppliers are not only providing customers with the ability to serve themselves, they also accelerate the process of collecting and communicating accurate information relating to new orders across their internal organization. This is crucial for a number of reasons, not the least of which is demand planning. By integrating front-end order acquisition processes with back-end fulfillment systems, demand for products and services can show up on the supplier organization's "radar" much sooner, and with more accuracy, than with antiquated, disconnected order entry processes. Such processes often carry a higher error rate, and almost always result in delayed communication of new order information throughout the supplier's organization. Given the fact that the customer's clock starts ticking from the moment they place an order, order entry delays frequently start a chain reaction of events that ultimately lead to missed customer expectations. This delayed or erroneous communication often looks like this:
The customer's "expectation clock" starts ticking when they place an order, often well before the supplier's organization even knows about the order, much less has the ability to react to it.
Warehouse management personnel waste time looking for finished goods that don't exist and managing excessive backorder workloads.
Production planners are caught off guard with "emergency" orders that would never have become an emergency in the first place if they had enough information and time to produce the finished goods being purchased by the customer (in build-to-stock situations, not build-to-order, of course).
Material management personnel are caught off guard because the production planners need to schedule their emergency production runs, but cannot because of unanticipated material shortages.
Production operations personnel are caught off guard with changing priorities and unplanned down-time required for retooling related to "rush" orders.
Customer service personnel go into "fire-drill" mode because the production delays are causing fulfillment delays, which must be communicated to the customer.
The shipping department is caught off guard with unexpected changes in shipping priorities required to minimize the damage to the customer's already diminishing view of the supplier's "ability to deliver".
Supplier performance scores start to go down due to missed delivery dates and errors in rushed shipments.
Customers greet the supplier's salespeople with problems, issues and concerns instead of satisfaction and willingness to look at new products and services. In a negative climate like this, customers often leverage the suppliers failures to extract better pricing and lopsided terms of business like performance guarantees with monetary penalties.
Sound familiar? Well, you're not alone. The bad news is that the early bird gets the worm, and companies failing to respond to these realities often find that their market share has dropped before they even know it. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. By integrating customer-facing eCommerce systems with back-end fulfillment workflows, errors are reduced, order fill rates go up, order exceptions are handled more proactively, and the supplier's ability to deliver what they promise becomes a reality.
Order Status and Shipment Tracking
Customers want to know what the status of their order is throughout the fulfillment process, until the order reaches their receiving dock or front porch. Yet, this area is most often neglected by companies with antiquated systems and workflows, because communication of order status and shipment tracking information often requires human intervention in the absence of automated processes.
By integrating customer-facing eCommerce sites with back-end fulfillment workflows, customers can not only place orders, but they can come back to the supplier's site to check order status and shipping information, which in-turn gives them another opportunity to shop and buy. Likewise, such information can be proactively delivered in system-generated email messages, which is more convenient, resulting in higher satisfaction ratings and even more opportunities to engage the customer.
Customer-facing, self-service portals can also provide the customer with an ability to request customer or technical service action through incident origination and tracking capabilities. Here again, while on the supplier's site, the customer is continually exposed to products, services and information, which is much more effective than trying to deliver that same information during a technical support phone call.
Aside from communication of order status information during the fulfillment process, and providing incident origination and tracking capabilities, suppliers can improve customer satisfaction and provide yet another self-service capability by integrating back-end fulfillment systems with shipping systems. Such systems not only accommodate preparation of shipping documents, they also facilitate self-service package tracking by providing customers with near-real-time information throughout the delivery process at he click of a button.
By empowering the customer with the ability to track their own shipments, suppliers can reduce the number of unproductive calls to salespeople and customer service personnel, thereby freeing up those resources for more beneficial purposes, while satisfying a critical customer need. Such information can also be routed back to the supplier's website, which provides yet another reason for the customer to come back and shop some more while checking the status of an existing order.
Conclusion
Regardless of the supplier's business model, providing customers with self-service capability is a win-win proposition. Customers love the ability to take action when they want to, and be informed about order and shipping status without having to make a phone call or send an email message. This not only improves customer satisfaction by giving them more control over their interaction with the supplier's company, but it gives them the ability to focus on other ways the supplier can help them be successful in the form of new product and service choices.
By integrating eCommerce systems with back-end ERP systems and shipping processes, information flows more smoothly across the supplier's enterprise, with a higher degree of accuracy and efficiency, than with disconnected systems and workflows. All these things enable the supplier's organization to improve delivery performance, keep customers informed and engaged without a lot of manual intervention, and reduce operating costs by automating tedious, time-delayed and non-productive processes. The result... happier customers, increased market share and higher profitability due to better use of the supplier's assets.
Benjamin Ellerd is a principal ERP software consultant specializing in the manufacturing and distribution industries. He previously worked with Fortune 1000 companies on systems integration, workflow optimization and cost-reduction initiatives, and he now works primarily with small and mid-sized companies. Ben's software expertise includes QuickBooks Enterprise, Fishbowl Inventory and xTuple ERP solutions for mid-sized companies.
Ben can be reached at:
QBS Southeast LLC
2523 Education Way
Oakwood, GA 30566
678-725-1309 Mobile
bellerd@qbservices.us
[http://www.qbservices.us]
Copy writter © 2018 John Freech
Given today's competitive business climate and technological capabilities, companies must do more to improve order acquisition and fulfillment capabilities than simply applying more manpower. They must deploy solutions that support a growing desire on the part of customers for self-service, delivering processes that empower customers with the ability to execute and manage their buying experience with predictable and manageable results.
On the surface, this might seem a simple task for suppliers... all they have to do is deploy an eCommerce website with a shopping cart. While some companies have taken this step, many still have only one method of inputting new orders into back-end fulfillment systems... manual data entry. In addition to being an inefficient and expensive way to communicate new order information to the rest of the organization, this approach is fraught with potential for errors and delays in the order management workflow.
Companies looking for a competitive advantage need look no further than the methods and practices used to acquire, communicate, and fulfill orders. Here are three principles to consider when planning order acquisition and fulfillment strategies:
Empower customers with self-service shopping and/or order placement capabilities where possible. This applies to both consumer and business-to-business customers.
Integrate front-end order acquisition with back-end order management and fulfillment processes.
Keep customers informed of the progress of their order(s) through electronic order confirmations and online order status information.
In the past, these strategies have been accessible only to large companies with substantial information technology budgets and staff. But today, open systems and community-managed standards provide the ability to easily connect existing front and back-end systems without a lot of cost or time. Likewise, open-source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, which is not only affordable, but sometimes free, provides the ability to integrate all business functions into one seamlessly integrated system.
So, equipped with the knowledge that both the technologies and integrated workflow methods are within reach, let's look at ways to improve the customer's buying experience while streamlining the fulfillment process.
Self-Service Shopping Via eCommerce Sites
eCommerce sites provide manufacturers and distributors (suppliers) with the ability to design how the customer is exposed to product and service choices, using multimedia tools to offer variety in the customer's shopping and buying experience. This allows customers to follow the path they are most comfortable with in evaluating and choosing which products and services to buy. eCommerce portals can also facilitate order placement and tracking for customers who buy products and services on a regular basis without necessarily shopping, which is frequently the case with b2b customers. Here are some things to consider when looking at self-service eCommerce sites:
Todays customers love to be empowered with the ability to shop and purchase at will, and on their own schedule. Suppliers who recognize this, and are willing to place this capability into the hands of buyers, are far more likely to produce happy customers who enjoy the buying experience enough to return to the site frequently and buy more often.
Customers looking for education prior to making a buying decision can be presented with information in a variety of formats, including short videos, written tutorials, pictures charts, graphs, even music (depending on the product or service offering), followed by an opportunity to buy. In diversifying the modes and methods for delivering information to customers, suppliers can increase the probability that the customer will find useful information in a format they prefer, which facilitates their comfort level with the supplier's company and product offering.
Customers wishing to interact with suppliers prior to making a buying decision can be presented with multiple contact choices, including real-time chat, email and pre-sale telephone support, all reachable from the supplier's site.
Current information, product updates and contextual information about the supplier's company and products can be delivered by subject-matter experts through a web log, also known as a blog. This keeps the supplier's information fresh and its customers engaged, which also encourages them to come back to the site more often.
Customers looking for references, satisfaction reviews, or comments by other customers can be routed to the supplier's social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where credible feedback on the supplier's products and company is readily available, and interaction with and among customers can take place almost in real-time.
Integration With Fulfillment Systems
All of these factors serve to enhance the buying experience for the customer, which is a good thing. But there is a greater good at play in the use of these strategies as they pertain to order fulfillment. By empowering customers with self-service ordering, suppliers are not only providing customers with the ability to serve themselves, they also accelerate the process of collecting and communicating accurate information relating to new orders across their internal organization. This is crucial for a number of reasons, not the least of which is demand planning. By integrating front-end order acquisition processes with back-end fulfillment systems, demand for products and services can show up on the supplier organization's "radar" much sooner, and with more accuracy, than with antiquated, disconnected order entry processes. Such processes often carry a higher error rate, and almost always result in delayed communication of new order information throughout the supplier's organization. Given the fact that the customer's clock starts ticking from the moment they place an order, order entry delays frequently start a chain reaction of events that ultimately lead to missed customer expectations. This delayed or erroneous communication often looks like this:
The customer's "expectation clock" starts ticking when they place an order, often well before the supplier's organization even knows about the order, much less has the ability to react to it.
Warehouse management personnel waste time looking for finished goods that don't exist and managing excessive backorder workloads.
Production planners are caught off guard with "emergency" orders that would never have become an emergency in the first place if they had enough information and time to produce the finished goods being purchased by the customer (in build-to-stock situations, not build-to-order, of course).
Material management personnel are caught off guard because the production planners need to schedule their emergency production runs, but cannot because of unanticipated material shortages.
Production operations personnel are caught off guard with changing priorities and unplanned down-time required for retooling related to "rush" orders.
Customer service personnel go into "fire-drill" mode because the production delays are causing fulfillment delays, which must be communicated to the customer.
The shipping department is caught off guard with unexpected changes in shipping priorities required to minimize the damage to the customer's already diminishing view of the supplier's "ability to deliver".
Supplier performance scores start to go down due to missed delivery dates and errors in rushed shipments.
Customers greet the supplier's salespeople with problems, issues and concerns instead of satisfaction and willingness to look at new products and services. In a negative climate like this, customers often leverage the suppliers failures to extract better pricing and lopsided terms of business like performance guarantees with monetary penalties.
Sound familiar? Well, you're not alone. The bad news is that the early bird gets the worm, and companies failing to respond to these realities often find that their market share has dropped before they even know it. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. By integrating customer-facing eCommerce systems with back-end fulfillment workflows, errors are reduced, order fill rates go up, order exceptions are handled more proactively, and the supplier's ability to deliver what they promise becomes a reality.
Order Status and Shipment Tracking
Customers want to know what the status of their order is throughout the fulfillment process, until the order reaches their receiving dock or front porch. Yet, this area is most often neglected by companies with antiquated systems and workflows, because communication of order status and shipment tracking information often requires human intervention in the absence of automated processes.
By integrating customer-facing eCommerce sites with back-end fulfillment workflows, customers can not only place orders, but they can come back to the supplier's site to check order status and shipping information, which in-turn gives them another opportunity to shop and buy. Likewise, such information can be proactively delivered in system-generated email messages, which is more convenient, resulting in higher satisfaction ratings and even more opportunities to engage the customer.
Customer-facing, self-service portals can also provide the customer with an ability to request customer or technical service action through incident origination and tracking capabilities. Here again, while on the supplier's site, the customer is continually exposed to products, services and information, which is much more effective than trying to deliver that same information during a technical support phone call.
Aside from communication of order status information during the fulfillment process, and providing incident origination and tracking capabilities, suppliers can improve customer satisfaction and provide yet another self-service capability by integrating back-end fulfillment systems with shipping systems. Such systems not only accommodate preparation of shipping documents, they also facilitate self-service package tracking by providing customers with near-real-time information throughout the delivery process at he click of a button.
By empowering the customer with the ability to track their own shipments, suppliers can reduce the number of unproductive calls to salespeople and customer service personnel, thereby freeing up those resources for more beneficial purposes, while satisfying a critical customer need. Such information can also be routed back to the supplier's website, which provides yet another reason for the customer to come back and shop some more while checking the status of an existing order.
Conclusion
Regardless of the supplier's business model, providing customers with self-service capability is a win-win proposition. Customers love the ability to take action when they want to, and be informed about order and shipping status without having to make a phone call or send an email message. This not only improves customer satisfaction by giving them more control over their interaction with the supplier's company, but it gives them the ability to focus on other ways the supplier can help them be successful in the form of new product and service choices.
By integrating eCommerce systems with back-end ERP systems and shipping processes, information flows more smoothly across the supplier's enterprise, with a higher degree of accuracy and efficiency, than with disconnected systems and workflows. All these things enable the supplier's organization to improve delivery performance, keep customers informed and engaged without a lot of manual intervention, and reduce operating costs by automating tedious, time-delayed and non-productive processes. The result... happier customers, increased market share and higher profitability due to better use of the supplier's assets.
Benjamin Ellerd is a principal ERP software consultant specializing in the manufacturing and distribution industries. He previously worked with Fortune 1000 companies on systems integration, workflow optimization and cost-reduction initiatives, and he now works primarily with small and mid-sized companies. Ben's software expertise includes QuickBooks Enterprise, Fishbowl Inventory and xTuple ERP solutions for mid-sized companies.
Ben can be reached at:
QBS Southeast LLC
2523 Education Way
Oakwood, GA 30566
678-725-1309 Mobile
bellerd@qbservices.us
[http://www.qbservices.us]
Copy writter © 2018 John Freech
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