Order processing is the workflow a business earns its money with. Even so, rarely does anyone know all of it. Sales sees the receipt, the warehouse sees picking, accounts sees the invoice. What happens in between sits in mailboxes, lists and conversations in the corridor.

“Digitalising” therefore does not mean buying a new program. It means making sure an order is entered once and then reaches the invoice without re-keying, chasing or searching.

The route of an order

In most businesses an order passes through the same stations, even if they have different names:

  1. Receipt. The order arrives by email, as a PDF, by phone, through the web shop or a customer portal.
  2. Checking and costing. Is the customer known, are the prices right, is the stock there, can the date be met? For custom work, someone does the costing.
  3. Approval. Someone decides whether the order is accepted as it stands: because of a discount, a credit limit, a delivery date or technical feasibility.
  4. Scheduling. The order goes to the warehouse, production or the technicians. Material is ordered, dates are set.
  5. Delivery or service. Goods go out, a job is done, a delivery note or a report is created.
  6. Invoice. Order and delivery become the invoice, which moves on to accounts.

On paper that is a straight line. In practice the order jumps back and forth between departments, and something can get lost at every handover.

Where the order leaves the system

Typical breaks we see again and again in first conversations:

  • At receipt: The order arrives as a PDF and is created in the ERP by hand. Web shop orders land as emails in a mailbox instead of directly in the system.
  • In costing: The calculation runs in an Excel file, and the result is typed over. Whoever maintains the file is the only one who knows how it works.
  • At approval: The decision is made by email or in passing. Later nobody knows who approved what and when. How to do this properly is described in the guide Digital approvals.
  • In scheduling: Warehouse or production keep their own lists because the system does not know their workflow. The status goes back by phone.
  • At delivery: Delivery notes are printed, ticked off and entered again in the office.
  • At invoicing: The invoice is created in the ERP, and accounts enters it again in its own program.

Each of these breaks costs time, causes errors and means nobody can immediately answer the question “Where is the order?” Where this duplicate work comes from is covered in the guide Stopping double data entry.

How to find the breaks

Take a real order, not a sample, and follow it from receipt to paid invoice. Sit down at the workplaces where it is handled and have people show you what happens.

At each station, note:

  • In which program, list or mailbox is the order right now?
  • Where does the information come from, and is it entered again?
  • Who decides here, and where is the decision recorded?
  • What is the order waiting for, and who notices that it is waiting?

At the end you have a list of the points where the order leaves the system. That list is worth more than any list of requirements drawn up from gut feeling. How to record this without producing a binder nobody reads is shown in the guide Documenting business processes. This is exactly the step we take with you in the process analysis.

Three routes to close the breaks

Not every break needs the same solution. Usually there are three routes:

Connect. The programs are fine in themselves, but they do not talk to each other. Web shop, ERP and accounts are connected through interfaces where possible, so the order is entered once and arrives everywhere. A common example is described in the guide Connecting your online shop and ERP.

Extend. The ERP covers the standard, but your own costing, your approvals or your scheduling do not fit into it. Then an application of your own for exactly this part helps, connected to the ERP, instead of one more Excel list next to it.

Replace. The system itself can no longer keep up: no updates, hardly adaptable, only one person knows it. Then it is about replacing it, ideally area by area, so the business keeps running. For workflows of your own we develop on ElbDesk, the foundation we build on.

Our system check assesses in eight questions which route fits you best.

What comes first

Do not try to close every break at once. Start where it hurts most:

  • Where do most errors or queries arise?
  • Where does the order wait most often?
  • Where does the workflow depend on a single person?

Often that is the receipt, because what is entered cleanly there does not have to be corrected later. Sometimes it is the approval, because orders get stuck there. What matters is that after the first step the whole route is looked at again. Closing one break often just moves the problem to the next station.

In the end, a digitalised order is one that everyone in the business finds in the same place, with the same status. That sounds simple. It is the foundation for everything that follows.