Distribution and wholesale
When sales, stock and fulfilment work from different information, people spend time checking and correcting. We help distributors connect the process and make exceptions easier to manage.
Book a free introductionAn order arrives in an email, a customer calls about availability and the warehouse is working from a different version of the information. We help wholesalers and distributors connect the work between sales, purchasing, fulfilment and finance. The value comes from making orders easier to process, exceptions easier to spot and reliable information easier for your team to find when a customer needs an answer.
Features and business benefits
We scope the workflows around your priorities, available information and the people responsible for the work.
Read agreed order formats, identify customer and product references and prepare a draft for validation. Highlight missing quantities, unfamiliar codes or pricing differences so the team can focus on exceptions instead of retyping every line.
Give customer service access to agreed inventory and order-status sources through an assistant or unified view. Make freshness and uncertain dates visible, helping staff prepare useful answers without promising availability that has not been confirmed.
Organise supplier files, product descriptions and item attributes into a reviewable update process. Flag changed specifications, duplicate records and missing information before distribution to your systems, reducing inconsistent product data across sales channels.
Bring purchase orders, supplier acknowledgements and expected delivery details together. Prepare reminders and identify changes that affect customer commitments, giving buyers a practical queue of issues that need a conversation or decision.
Collect short picks, damaged stock and delivery discrepancies against the relevant order. Route the issue with supporting information to the correct owner so customer service, warehouse and finance work from the same account of the problem.
Combine agreed sales, purchasing and fulfilment measures for scheduled reporting or plain English queries. Investigate backlog, ageing stock and avoidable manual touches, with definitions that distinguish confirmed costs and quantities from estimates.
Older ERP and warehouse systems often remain central to distribution operations. We assess supported APIs, database access and exports without assuming they need replacing. Customer item codes, pack sizes, units of measure and price rules need particular care. We agree which system owns each field and how failed or partial updates are reconciled, so a useful automation does not create a second version of stock or orders.
An illustrative workflow to explore during discovery. The final design depends on your systems and operating requirements.
A repeat customer emails an order using their own product references.
The workflow maps recognised codes and quantities, highlighting an unfamiliar item.
Sales checks the exception and approves the order through the existing process.
Confirmed order and fulfilment milestones inform customer service and the reporting view.
The outcome
Less order handling. More attention on the exceptions that affect customers.
Detailed process mapping begins the engagement, so everyone agrees what is changing and why.
We review real examples, systems, handovers and exceptions with your team. The process map records responsibilities and a starting point for measuring improvement.
We define the first workflow, expected benefit, setup and running costs, review effort and success measures. The scope makes approval points and decision ownership explicit.
We test representative and awkward cases with your team, then introduce the workflow in stages. Training, documentation, monitoring and support responsibilities form part of the delivery plan.
Track manual touches per order, correction rates, time to acknowledge an order and the age of unresolved fulfilment issues. Compare stock enquiry handling and reporting preparation effort before and after the pilot. Include the cost of maintaining supplier and product mappings when assessing whether the improvement pays its way.
It can assist with selected formats and document types. We test representative examples and define validation rules, especially for quantities, units and item references, before allowing a draft into the order process.
Only where a confirmed source and agreed business rule support the answer. Estimates and uncertain supply should remain clearly identified and go to the team when a customer commitment needs judgement.
The design includes exception alerts, ownership and a way to reconcile incomplete updates. Your team needs to know what failed, which records are affected and how to continue processing work.
Start with a conversation
Book a free 30-minute call. We'll talk through what's getting in the way, where we can help, and how we can work together to move things forward.
