A while back I was approached by a locally owned distributor and manufacturer who was having a problem keeping track of its open purchase orders. On any given day the company had over 1,500 open orders but its current process was unable to keep up with the volume. It was beginning to cause loss of revenue and customer disappointment.

This company does over $500M in business each year. Its inventory and sales department is spread out over 18 branches. In addition, it uses over 450 suppliers to reach in excess of 525,000 customers.

In its current system, the company had a team of buyers who were responsible for keeping track of all open purchase orders, in addition to creating new ones. The buyers were in charge of manually updating whether an order had actually shipped or if the supplier was delayed and therefore the shipment to the customer would be delayed.

To make matters worse, the logistics group were relying on this information also. They needed to know when the orders were shipping so they would have the correct ground transportation to get the materials from the supplier to the customers. When the status of the orders was incorrect, logistics was negatively impacted. There were instances when logistics either didn’t have a truck ready to move the material or they didn’t have enough trucks, leading to additional delays and cost.

All of this information was updated via manual data entry by the buyers. The buyers would get the information from the suppliers via email, phone or fax. The buyers would then have to update each purchase order by logging into each purchase order individually. This created backlog problems as the buyers couldn’t keep up with the volume. It also resulted in data entry errors, which ultimately resulted in dissatisfied and angry customers.

So this is what Codinginnovations.com did: Recognizing that the best solution was to create real-time updates to each purchase order, we set out to create a web-based portal. With the requirements already in place, we used a team of 3 and in about 12 weeks delivered the completed program.

The final results allows suppliers to log into a custom designed webpage and update the status of their own orders. The web-based portal eliminates the need for emails or phone calls back and forth and reduces the data entry errors. It also gives the company live data and updates on the location and status of each order. The web-based portal allows the company to effectively communicate with their customers and manage expectations. Also, the company is able to more proficiently run its logistics department. Money is saved by efficiently loading trucks and making sure transportation is available when needed.

Sound like something your business needs? Contact me at Don@Codinginnovations.com so we can talk about how to make your business run smoother.