Importance of Accuracy in Order fulfillment: Dairy Industry
What is Order Fulfillment?
Although the term means different things to different businesses, in general, ‘order fulfillment’ involves receiving, processing and delivering orders. Usually fulfillment companies are third-party order fulfillment service providers that carry out these steps for businesses. Each provider uses their own order management solutions to process orders in the most accurate way possible. Some businesses have their own online ordering system through which customers place orders directly.
Whatever the case might be, order fulfillment is not to be taken lightly, as it defines your interaction with your customer. And so, you need to get it right.
Why is Accuracy Important?
Order fulfillment accuracy is critical for perishable items. This is especially true in the dairy industry. The short shelf-life or ‘perishability’ of milk and milk products increases the pressure for faster and accurate deliveries. However, to achieve this, making shortcuts in the fulfillment process can lead to inefficiencies and errors.
Accuracy is of essence if you want to create a pool of repeat customers. On time delivery of the right items in the right quantity to the right address is of utmost importance. There is no room for error. Errors can be costly in terms of time, money and reputation.
Your focus should be on getting every order through, accurately. This will rule out runbacks, cut out losses and rope in customers.
What affects accuracy in order fulfillment?
Missed orders: Customers place orders with a business in different ways. There are multiple channels that the customer may use — Email, phone, fax, messaging services, online portal, etc. Sometimes, orders may pour in over multiple pages in a single fax and, sometimes erroneously, orders on just the first page get picked.
Without an overall view of all your orders aggregated in a single place, it is easy to miss out on orders. This can spell bad news for the business, as customers can lose faith in you. It is important to make sure that you receive orders from all channels.
Wrong product/quantity: Getting the type of product or quantity of product incorrect is another common error in order processing. This happens mostly when orders are placed via phone or voice messages, and the processing agent transcribes wrong order details.
Wrong delivery addresses: Delivering the right product to the wrong address is equivalent to the package getting lost.
Wrong Packaging: The customer might sometimes choose to receive the order in cartons and sometimes as individual units. Failure to specify the kind of packaging would mean delivering the purchased items in the wrong choice of package.
How can you eliminate these inaccuracies?
You can automate your order management process to drive accuracy and performance! Rather than stick to outdated manual processes, it makes sense to revamp the order process with the transformational benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Besides reducing processing time and cutting down costs, RPA-enabled automated best order management systems can help eliminate basic, easily avoidable, human errors.
Through RPA, you can get rid of error-prone manual work. When manual steps are eliminated, the order process becomes faster and more accurate. For example, eliminating manual data entry, eliminating repetitive inputs of the same data, alerts to indicate orders that are not processed, etc. are some essential features that will assist the process.
With the aid of technology, you can ensure that you never miss an order ever again. Orders from various channels can be aggregated easily. Best order processing software with centralized order history will help in error-free processing and, hence, on-time deliveries. Without an automated system, having a comprehensive view of orders from all channels can be difficult, and prone to errors.
Typically, data entry in an order process is repetitive. Repetitive data entry is often a ripe area for errors. The nature of the work is such that even the most efficient can make mistakes. On the contrary, automation eliminates the need for repeated data entry thus reducing errors and the need for rework.
Conclusion
The dairy industry is fast-paced. Customers require shorter order fulfillment cycle times in the dairy industry. Accuracy, reliability and consistency are key criteria when choosing milk suppliers. Errors can spell disaster in more ways than one.
Getting your order process accurate will ensure that you get an edge over your competitors. With automation, your brand gets associated with consistency and reliability. Surprise your customers by delivering exactly what they ordered in a timely manner, every time. Automated order management systems provide greater efficiency, productivity and a true customer-centric approach to order processing and fulfillment.
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