Distributor Team of 4 Ditches Paper Processes & Saves Hours per Order
Background
Tracy had been running her promotional products company the same way for over 35 years – MANUALLY. To get a single order out the door, Tracy and her mighty team of four spent hours:
- Visiting dozens of supplier websites to source products and confirm inventory quantities
- Handwriting client quotes and manually entering them into Word docs
- Chasing client feedback via email while sorting through multiple printed copies of orders to stay on top of the latest versions
- Revisiting supplier websites and calling them to reconfirm inventory quantities before emailing or faxing POs
- Reworking quotes, making client edits, and entering the same information from the quote into QuickBooks to create an order
- Printing and stapling paper copies of the final order and manually filing it away
Some may describe their process as outdated and inefficient. To Tracy, “that’s just the way we’ve had always done it.”
Challenge
Tracy’s team was growing frustrated with their process – or lack thereof – and it was becoming a major pain point. Instead of spending time networking and growing their client base, her team was stuck in the office pushing paper. With the process being manual, there was more room for error which often left her team doing and redoing the same tasks and losing clients due to order errors and long turnaround time.
On top of that, communication was difficult and disjointed. Keeping track of the latest version of each quote with multiple printed copies circulating was a challenge. Her team struggled to stay on top of each request, chasing client orders through long email threads.
Tracy wanted to find a solution, but her concern was that learning an order management system would be overwhelming, not to mention, costly. She assumed all order management systems catered to large promo businesses with too many bells and whistles.
Solution
Commercio Orders was designed specifically for small distributors like Tracy’s.
By using Commercio Orders, Tracy and her team were able to:
- Search thousands of supplier products & see their real-time inventory in one place
- Create and edit quotes in seconds
- Send clients and suppliers electronic POs
- Conveniently access order history from anywhere – no more being tied to an office
- Streamline quote and order formatting into one professional, cohesive look
With Commercio Orders, Tracy and her team can run their entire business in one system. From CRM to product sourcing and quotes to PO submission, all tasks from client to distributor to supplier take place in Orders. No need to hop from one screen to another.
Results
After implementing orders, Tracy and her team have seen:
- A reduction in time to process orders (from hours to minutes)
- Improved client retention
- Capacity to take on more clients
