Order out of purchase orders by using e-forms
I was very interested in the recent experience of our Claromentis partners in Australia – with a significant client that presented them with what is on the face of it a relatively simple problem – “please help us to automate our purchase orders”.
The interest here is that the organisation concerned had already spent a significant amount of funds on what might have been our own first reaction – a sophisticated and well designed portal where customers can log on, receive customised information and place orders that can be securely monitored and tracked.
Such process management systems are the focus of InfoCapture, the Claromentis e-forms application, and we have delivered a great number of such systems that deliver huge value to customers.
If you are interested you can log onto our e-forms demo system here, ( select the IC interface from the choice ) and you can immediately review some examples.
But in this case that kind of approach just had not worked.
The reason? The lack of ability to impose change on the valuable customer base. For years they had become accustomed to submitting free form emails to orders@ourcustomername.com then sitting back expecting the service desk to work everything out and process the order efficiently.
They took a short look at a sophisticated portal, where they had to remember credentials and complete lots of data in a structured way – and voted with their feet. Back to orders@ and you sort it out, thank you very much.
The response of our partner was exemplary.
1) Focus on the customer – if sending emails to orders@ is what they want to do, let them do it. We are your IT partner and we are supposed to make orders more efficient, not cut down on their number.
2) Preserve your goal of increased customer service through automation. There is a business problem to face and we need to resolve it.
The result was exactly in line with these requirements. The implementation was as follows :
a) Use mail fetching from InfoCapture to automatically open the request in the process from the free form email, using mail fetching – a standard feature of InfoCapture.
b) Use notifications to alert the administrators at our customer that a new order had been received
c) The administrators then completed the required fields in the request form of the e-form process, not the customer, simply by reading the email. They then assigned the request to the appropriate staff, based on the details of the order – and the process, complete with status changes and automatic notifications – takes over.
The result – a very happy customer, and orders that are processed much more efficiently, with full reporting, without the customers changing their own behaviour at all.
These kinds of lessons are important, in my view.
1) Those of us that spend our lives applying information management processes to increase the efficiency of a business might, if we are not careful, over-engineer a process. In e-forms, like in a lot of things, there is no value in doing anything “just because we can”, and sometimes a lot of risk.
2) Don’t think that obviously sophisticated systems will impress your customers, or indeed suppliers, just by their obvious functionality and power. Customers buy goods and services from lots of companies, and if we all ask them to jump through hoops they can always go somewhere where it’s easier.
In summary as a supplier of web based software for businesses we must always make sure we are aware of the importance of change management.
This order processing case study was a particularly clear example where the illusion of leaving the customer in the old world, while fulfilling the orders in a modern process driven e-form made the solution extremely effective.
But there are many, many instances in information platforms where simple is the best, and power should be kept hidden under the hood.
If you have an e-form problem with your purchase orders you might like to contact Claromentis Australia – or any Claromentis regional office – we would be happy to share our experiences.