Out of all of our wholesale business tips, there's one you can take action on now: eliminate order re-entry, automate the process, and ship products faster.

1. Post Link: How Order Redundancy is Killing Your Wholesale Business
How Order Redundancy is Killing Your Wholesale Business
No one wants to hear the word “redundancy” in reference to anything having to do with running
a business. Redundancy, after all, translates to wasted time, underutilized resources, and
money lost.
Yet it’s all too common in wholesale businesses. Wholesalers still using paper to write their
orders are victim to a kind of “order redundancy,” in which the same order must be transferred
or re-entered several times over to get submitted and finally shipped. Does the following sound
familiar?
Sales rep writes order on a paper order form.1.
Sales rep takes paper order form back to the hotel and either faxes it, scans and emails it,2.
phones it in, or enters it into a spreadsheet.
Back office staff takes fax, phone message, email, or spreadsheet and re-enters the order3.
into your ERP system.
This incredibly convoluted order submission process is extremely common among wholesale
businesses across industries. If you’re one of them, let’s go over why what may now seem like
a clunky, yet tolerable workaround is actually killing your business.
1. High Order Processing Costs

2. With every additional man hour it takes to process an order, your costs go up:
The costs of ordering paper order formsq
Hours spent on data entry by your sales reps and back office staffq
Shipping delaysq
A two or three-level order re-entry process can be like a game of Telephone. Information
doesn’t always come out unscathed on the other side. Bad handwriting, misinterpretation,
smudges on faxes, etc. can all cause errors, which can in turn result in costly returns and time
spent on error resolution.
2. The Opportunity Costs of Data Entry
Perhaps your sales reps are spending a few hours per week on order re-entry or submission.
Maybe you have team entirely dedicated to data entry, or your customer service staff are
spending more time on it than they would like.
Take a minute to think about the opportunity costs here. What could all of these people be
doing, if they no longer had to sit at their desks entering words and numbers into a computer?
Perhaps your sales reps would have more time and mental energy in store visits and meetings
to provide strategic insights to your customers. Maybe your data entry team could morph into a
“customer care” team, or your customer service team could spend more reaching out to
customers.
3. A Poor Experience for Customers
Order re-entry woes not only affect your internal team, they also have a direct impact on your
customers. At the most basic level, order re-entry means order delays.
Say, for instance, your sales reps write a series of orders on Monday and Tuesday, but don’t
get to faxing them in until Friday evening. An entire weekend goes by, and the orders aren’t
entered into your ERP until Monday afternoon. Your warehouse then has an overwhelming
influx of orders all at once, causing further delays, and your customer’s shipment doesn’t go out
until Wednesday––a week and a half after it was placed.
Similarly, at trade shows, it could be weeks before your customers receive even a confirmation
of their order. By then, they’ve forgotten what they spoke with your reps about, and
unfortunately, the paper confirmation doesn’t include any visuals to jog their memory.
As more wholesalers realize that these pain points are not just annoyances, but real obstacles
to success, they’re taking action. By digitizing the order writing process and automating manual
order submission, they’re focusing on closing more deals, shipping product faster, and
delighting their customers. For more wholesale business tips, continue to check back on our
blog!
Post originally located at: https://www.handshake.com/blog/wholesale-business-tips-elimin-
te-order-re-entry/
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