One of the biggest problems for B2B companies is dealing with data entry errors. You're perhaps one B2B business that still uses antiquated wholesale order management software requiring manual data entry to get order information coordinated. This can lead to vast confusion for your fulfillment center, especially when they have to call you to see why you have discrepancies on record.
When they're forced to do this, it only leads to less productivity and more downtime. As a result, it brings potential money losses since it could take weeks to hunt down an error and correct it.
It's time for you to update your wholesale order management software so you can avoid manual data entry. Even if it provides work for data entry operators, many who do those jobs have thankless tasks. You may want to upgrade those employees to something better after years of worrying about making mistakes.
But what kind of errors might you see that could affect things? Here are some examples, plus how better automation and cloud software immediately change things.
The 1% error rate problem
It's been said that one out of every 100 data pieces will likely have a mistake, which can cause a significant problem for you and your fulfillment center.
Just one small error in delivery to your most loyal buyers could result in tarnishing your reputation. The fact that your fulfillment center has to take the brunt of this criticism only lessens the trust you've developed working with your trading partner. You don't want finger-pointing to occur when mistakes take place. You need to use an automated system to get information placed into a more centralized database.
Mistakes in shipping dates
The best wholesale order management software takes shipping information and automatically enters it into financial software like QuickBooks for easy organization and retrieval. Shipping dates can quickly get confused if someone has to enter these by hand.
At risk are common manual data entry errors: Reversing a month and day or accidentally typing a surrounding number on the keyboard. Having a shipping date, even one day off could result in a business customer losing money because your product arrived late. This could occur simply because you didn't catch the error until after it shipped.
Mistakes in shipping quantities
Your data entry operators might also type the wrong number on product quantities. As a result, it could mean you accidentally shipping several products when the buyer only wanted one. Or, the reverse could happen, and only one product gets sent when the buyer buys in bulk.
Automation sets the quantity level through one-click ordering. Through a B2B customer portal, the buyer can see what they ordered, so they don't have to make second guesses.
Mistakes in shipping costs
Businesses don't want to pay more for shipping just because a data entry error happened. While you can credit their account, it takes time for these to occur and becomes a major embarrassment in the process.
Never rely on data entry operators to enter shipping costs because major gaffes here may become time-consuming. When shipping costs are automatically entered into QuickBooks, they also go to the B2B customer portal so buyers can see exactly what they're paying without having to email you to confirm.
Mistakes in tracking numbers
It's equally important to avoid manual entry for tracking numbers because these are always complex, with long lines of numbers and letters. One character off may lead to a dead-end for a buyer who wants to check in on their order to see when it arrives.
Quality ordering software sends this information again to the B2B customer portal so the buyer can check in 24/7 to confirm their ordering status.
