The order is not the hard part. The translation is. #
A trade customer does not order in your product codes. They order in their own words: two boxes of the usual blue ones, a case of the 25s, same as last week but no cheese. Somebody at your end has to do all of this.
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Turn it into line codes, with quantities and pack sizes
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Look up the price that customer is on
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Check whether the lines are in stock
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Check the account is in credit
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Key it
That translation is repeated dozens of times a day. It is not skilled, it is knowledgeable, which is a different and more awkward thing.
The channels, and what each one costs #
| Channel | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Phone | Real time, so it blocks a person entirely. Questions get answered as you go, which is the one advantage. Errors are caught in conversation, but nothing is written down until afterwards |
| Arrives when the customer feels like it, in any format, often as a reply to a thread from three weeks ago. Needs reading, interpreting and keying, plus a reply confirming what you understood | |
| Photograph of an order pad | All of the email cost plus handwriting. Usually needs a phone call to confirm two lines |
| Text or messaging app | Fast for the customer, invisible to everyone else in the business, and easy to lose when the person who received it is on holiday |
| Portal or EDI | Arrives structured, which removes the translation. The cost moves to exceptions: lines that no longer exist, quantities that break a pack size, prices that have changed |
Most wholesalers run all five at once, because customers choose the channel, not the supplier. The Federation of Wholesale Distributors says its members supply over 400,000 retail and catering businesses, and every one of those customers has its own habit.
Which parts run on rules #
The test is the usual one: a trigger you can state in a sentence, the same shape of output every time, and two competent people producing the same answer.
Rule driven
- Recognising that an incoming message is an order rather than a query
- Identifying the account it belongs to
- Matching a description to a product code
- Applying that customer's agreed price
- Checking stock and credit
- Flagging what does not match instead of guessing
- Sending back a confirmation of what was understood
Not rule driven
- Deciding whether to substitute a line when the exact product is out
- Deciding whether to release an order that takes a customer over their limit
- Knowing that this customer always means the 5 litre when they say the big one, and knowing when they do not
- Any conversation about a problem
The second list is short, and it is where the value is.
A trade supplier's edge is that a person who knows the customer picks up the phone. Everything on the first list is what stops that person being available.
What the error rate really costs #
A mis-keyed order is not one mistake, it is a chain: a wrong pick, a delivery that has to be corrected, a credit note, a customer who now checks every invoice, and an account query that surfaces four weeks later when the statement is paid short. That trail is covered in picking errors and credit notes, but it starts here, at the point of translation.
The paperwork has its own clock. HMRC guidance says a VAT invoice must normally be issued within 30 days of the date you make the supply, and VAT records must generally be kept for at least 6 years.
GOV.UK also sets out what any invoice has to show.
- A unique identification number
- Your business name, address and contact details
- The customer's company name and address
- A clear description of what you are charging for
- The supply date and the invoice date
- The amounts, the VAT if applicable and the total owed
Every one of those is a field, and fields are rule driven.
What to measure first #
Take one normal week. Count orders by channel, and for each channel record how long it took from arriving to being keyed, and how many needed a clarifying contact before they could be processed. Most wholesalers find that a small number of customers generate most of the clarification, and that the clarification, not the keying, is the cost.
The next place to look is the mailbox those orders land in, covered in the depot inbox, and the most predictable slice of all of it in repeat ordering. To put an hours figure on it, start with the free tools.