Your order entry is the most expensive copying in the business
Customer orders arrive in dozens of formats from hundreds of customers. Someone retypes them, matches part numbers and checks prices. That is exactly the work that lends itself to automation — and that lends itself to being counted.
How it works today
The order arrives as an attachment to an email, sometimes as text in the email itself, sometimes through a portal. Someone on the sales desk opens it, looks up the customer, and retypes it line by line into the ERP.
Every one of the customer's part numbers has to be translated into your own SKU. Prices are checked against the customer agreement, stock against the system. When in doubt an email goes back and forth.
It rarely goes wrong, but when it does it costs a credit note, an emergency delivery and an angry phone call.
Your ERP stays where it is. We deliver into what you already run — Exact Online, AFAS Profit, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or an industry package. For the full flow step by step, see how we automate order intake.
- Wholesalers with 10 to 100 staff
- Twenty or more orders a day by email, PDF or Excel
- An existing ERP that stays exactly where it is
- An internal sales desk structurally working late on data entry
What happens, step by step
- 1Collect the order
We take orders from the mailbox, the portal or a folder. Attachments in PDF, Excel and CSV are recognised, even when the layout differs per customer.
- 2Read the lines
Items, quantities, requested delivery date and references are read out. For a scan or a poorly legible document we measure the certainty per field.
- 3Match part numbers
Your customer's number is translated to your SKU through the translation table. Unknown numbers go to an exceptions list rather than to a guess.
- 4Check price and stock
The price is checked against the customer-specific agreement, not only against the standard price list. Stock is checked per line.
- 5Create the order
The order goes into the ERP, including reference and requested date. Everything is logged, so you can see afterwards what was processed and why.
- 6Send the confirmation
The customer gets a confirmation with a realistic delivery time based on stock and inbound purchasing, rather than a standard term.
Where it goes wrong when it is built too simply
These are the questions we ask in the quick scan. If a supplier does not ask them, they surface later anyway — usually once there is already an invoice.
- Your customer orders on their part number. Where does the translation table live, and what happens with a number that is not in it yet?
- The same order arrives by email and through the portal. Which one wins, and how do you recognise it is a duplicate?
- There is a customer-specific price agreement that differs from the price list. Is it followed or flagged?
- Two of five lines are in stock. Partial delivery, backorder, or does the whole order wait?
- VAT reverse-charged, an intra-EU delivery or a margin scheme — which go automatically and which never do?
- The attachment is a scan of a fax with a handwritten quantity added.
What it delivers
Order entry shifts from data entry to checking. Instead of retyping every order, someone looks at the exceptions — usually a fraction of the total.
Lead times also drop: orders arriving in the evening are ready in the morning rather than after the first coffee. And because every step is logged, an argument about what was ordered is something you look up rather than reconstruct.
What it delivers at your company depends on your volume and the number of formats. The Automation Check measures that before anything is built — and sometimes concludes it is not worth it.
Order intake is the largest category, because the translation table and the exceptions differ per company.
Build: from €8,500
Category: Complex custom work
Build time: 50 to 90 hours
Lead time: 6 weeks or more
Maintenance: Managed, €395 per month
A range, not a quote. What it becomes for you follows from the Automation Check. All prices →
See all prices →Start with one process
Tell us which work gets retyped most often at your company. If automating it turns out to be a bad idea, you will hear that in the first conversation — before there is an invoice.
The first conversation is free and without obligation. Want it substantiated? The Automation Check is €295 — deducted if you have us build within 30 days.