Harrowell

For UK distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers of 50 to 500 people

Sales order processing automation, starting where the time goes

In most sales order processing, the slow part comes before the order exists in your system: reading what the customer sent, finding the account and the products, checking prices and stock, and keying the lines. Automate that first, keep a person approving every order, and measure order processing time and order errors before and after.

Book thirty minutes

Or send us one order and see the draft it would become.

The problem

Your ERP handles an order well once someone has typed it in.

The sales order module in your ERP is good at what happens after entry: allocation, picking lists, dispatch notes, invoices. It can do very little with an email that says “10 of the grey ones, same as Tuesday, to the Leeds site”. That email waits for a person who knows what the grey ones are and what Tuesday’s order was.

So the work piles up at the front. Orders arrive by email, PDF, phone and the rep’s mobile, each in its own shape. Of the 108 UK distributors and wholesalers whose websites we read, 48% of those with online ordering still tell customers to phone, email or use a rep as well (our research note has the detail). Every route outside the portal ends with someone keying.

Step by step

The eight steps of sales order processing, and which ones we take on.

1. Receive
Written orders from every route are collected in one orders inbox, attachments included. Phone orders stay with your desk.
2. Read
Each order is read into lines: product, quantity, unit, delivery day, PO number and notes. Anything unclear is marked, never guessed.
3. Match
The sender is matched to an account and their own codes and descriptions to your product list. “The usual” comes from their order history.
4. Price
Every line is checked against the customer’s agreed prices. A difference is flagged on the draft, never quietly changed.
5. Check stock
Stock is checked line by line, with shortfalls and due dates shown. An account on stop is flagged; the credit decision stays with your people.
6. Enter
A draft order is created in your ERP, or waits on a screen if your system has no way in.
7. Confirm
A person approves the draft. The confirmation to the customer is written with it, for the same person to send.
8. Fulfil and invoice
Picking, dispatch and invoicing carry on in your ERP exactly as they do now. We don’t touch them.

Steps 2 to 4 in detail, with a worked example: AI order entry for UK distributors and wholesalers.

What stays with people

The calls your team should keep making.

Each of these is flagged on the draft with the reason. The decision is your team’s.

  1. Approving every draft order before it is confirmed to the customer.
  2. Substitutions when a product is short, unless you have set a rule for that customer.
  3. Price differences, where the purchase order says one price and the agreement says another.
  4. Accounts on stop, and customers over their credit limit.
  5. Customers who want a call back, and anything that reads like a complaint.
  6. Phone orders, which arrive spoken and are a different job.

What it connects to

Your inbox in, your ERP out.

Orders come from the mailbox they already reach. Microsoft 365 and Gmail both let an app you approve read a mailbox, and we would ask for the orders mailbox only. Your product list, customer prices, stock and order history are read from your ERP, the same figures your desk uses today.

Drafts go back into the ERP through whatever it accepts. Business Central’s API and SAP Business One’s Service Layer can both create sales orders, and Sage 200 has an API that apps connect to once you give it access. There is more on Sage 200 order entry and SAP Business One order entry. If your system has no way in, the checked draft waits on a screen for your team to key.

What it costs you today

Six minutes an order, 120 orders a day.

Where the minutes go on one order that arrives by email, timed step by step.

Opening and reading it
1.5 minutes
Finding the account and products
1.5 minutes
Checking prices, stock and the delivery day
1 minute
Keying the lines
1.5 minutes
Confirming to the customer
0.5 minutes
Total
6 minutes an order. At 120 orders a day that is 12 hours of desk time a day, 60 hours a week, or 1.6 full-time people, before anyone fixes a mistake.

Illustration with invented data. Time ten real orders on your own desk and put the figures into the order desk calculator.

What you get from us

Four steps, in this order.

  1. 30 minutes

    Call with you

    Where orders pile up, how they arrive, and which number it holds back.

  2. 1 hour

    Session with your team

    We time real orders through the steps above. You get a one-page verdict the same day: the workflow, the KPI, today’s baseline and a fixed price, or a written no.

  3. A fixed number of weeks

    Build

    We build it ourselves, with nothing subcontracted. Your people approve every draft.

  4. Every month

    Run and report

    Order processing time and order errors, against the baseline. Stop at any report.

Questions

What people ask about automating sales order processing.

What is sales order processing automation?
It is taking the repeat work out of handling a customer’s order, from the moment it arrives to the moment it is confirmed. The biggest share is usually reading and keying orders that arrive by email and PDF, so that is where we start.
We already have sales order processing software. What would this add?
Your ERP manages the order once it has been entered. This handles the step before: reading what the customer sent and turning it into a checked draft order inside that same ERP.
Which steps should stay manual?
Approving each order, substitutions, price differences, credit decisions and anything that needs a phone call. Each is flagged on the draft and the decision stays with your team.
How do you measure whether it worked?
Before the build we record today’s baseline: minutes from an order arriving to it being entered, and orders that go out wrong. Every month we report both against that baseline.
What if most of our orders come by phone?
Then the order desk may not be the right place to start, because spoken orders aren’t written down. The one-page verdict will say so. If we don’t find anything worth doing, we’ll tell you and leave.
Do we need to replace our ERP?
No. We connect to the system you run. If it has no way to accept orders from outside, the checked draft waits on a screen and your team keys it from there.

Next step

Thirty minutes on how orders reach you.

Tell us how orders arrive and which system they go into. If PDFs and emails are the bulk of it, the guide to getting email and PDF orders into your ERP is a useful read first. Or send us one order and get back the draft it would become.

The Open Build. We’ll build one UK supplier an order desk system, free and in public, measured on its own numbers. Everyone who applies gets a one-page read of their own workflow. Applications close at 5pm UK time on Friday 6 November. See the Open Build.