Improve order placement and delivery on a B2B web site
The opportunity to improve B2B service using VisibleLogistics
I was doing some marketing research for VisibleLogistics, when I came across an interesting article (in Dutch) on the Dutch web site of the special interest association for Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It talks about the perceived lack of quality for placing orders on web sites that are specially targeting other businesses. It also states that in 40 per cent of all on-line transactions there are problems with the delivery of the goods.
Reading this article made me realise how useful VisibleLogistics could be for such commercial business-oriented web sites. Placing orders would no longer have to be cumbersome, and the whole process of delivery can be handled in a collaborative and transparent way. Buyers would see if the products they have ordered are already under-way and intermediate problems can be communicated effectively. People no longer have to send e-mail back and forth or grab the telephone.
In short, VisibleLogistics will let business-oriented commercial websites improve their quality of service at low cost.
The supply chain cultural shift
Complex, extended and outsourced manufacturing processes require closer collaboration between partners across the supply chain; trust and simple information sharing will be key to this
Supply chain management (SCM) as a topic of conversation comes close to being the fastest way to induce narcolepsy. It is very difficult to explain precisely what supply chain management is, aside from various 'woolly' definitions about the science of getting 'the right products to the right place at the right time'. On the face of it, this is hardly a phrase that indicates a discipline that is vital, complex and in some cases quite exciting.
As an example, with the prevailing interrelationship between technology and physical logistics, a long-term breakdown in the national communications infrastructure would cause serious food shortages. This is because the synchronised replenishment of supermarkets and shopping centres ensures that 'in store' stocks are kept at minimum levels, secure in the knowledge that they will be replenished several times during the day. Such sequencing depends on an elaborate choreography involving computer systems, telecommunications networks and physical assets such as distribution centres and vehicles.
And this is only the beginning.
Pretty soon all physical products will be the result of a complex, outsourced manufacturing process, entirely dependant upon agile and adaptable supply chain networks. This trend has been evolving over the past 20 years and is driven by the desire for customised, personalised and configurable products. This shift away from the mass-produced, 'push it out into the market' approach that originated with pioneers such as Henry Ford, will have a profound impact on society.
Surprisingly, although technology will be the enabler of this transformation, the most important factor will be the shift in culture and habit necessary to engender true trading partner collaboration. Issues such as trust, information sharing and the development of relationship networks, will be the critical factors for success. Competitive advantage will naturally depend on product design, quality and brand image, but it will also result from the agility and flexibility of the supporting supply chain network.
A brief illustration of how this might manifest itself can be seen in some of the manufacturing processes found in the high tech industry. Increasingly, product design is the result of joint collaboration irrespective of the geographic location of the designers themselves. They will often factor into the design process, the availability of components, likely manufacturing locations and product life cycle before the next iteration. At every stage in the process, technology is used to support the activity in hand and in some instances, systems are interconnected to automate the process. We are still some way from linking all of these 'flows' into seamless operations, but the trend is clear.
Avoiding language issues
Status update e-mails help when you and your business partners do not understand each other's English
We were recently talking to someone who works for an import-export company. He is French, and told as that one of the difficulties he has when dealing with Eastern European transporters on the telephone is that they do not understand each other's English. They solve this by following-up each telephone call with an e-mail to confirm what was said. This works, but it costs time.
Although we had not thought of this before, it turns out that the VisibleLogistics notification e-mails I described in my previous post help a lot here. It is less effort to update an order status on a web page, and generate a notification e-mail, than it is to type the e-mail by hand. Furthermore, each e-mail has a standard structure, which makes it easier to translate and understand.
I guess we should think about adding the ability to generate notifications in Polish and Czech, for example.
Avoiding duplicate data entry in e-mail
How VisibleLogistics e-mail notifications help
While talking to people about our forthcoming VisibleLogistics product, we are conscious of the fact that people want to avoid entering the same data into two 'systems'. After all, everyone knows that the first rule of data entry is never re-key data, right?
Well, that is what people say, except for when the other system is e-mail. They just copy or retype order information into an e-mail whenever they need to let their customer know that the order status has changed. This is why VisibleLogistics sends e-mail notifications like this one:
Not only does it save you time by sending these automatically, but they save you double typing because the e-mail contains basic order information and a hyperlink to order information on the web.
VisibleLogistics coming soon
For the last few months we have been busy developing the first version of our new VisibleLogistics product, which is nearly ready for its first release. We will invite a small list of people to try out this release, which we hope will allow us to work out how close we have come to producing a really useful tool, and what we need to fix before a public release.
VisibleLogistics is an on-line order management application for small businesses who cannot afford the time or money for traditional heavy-weight IT systems, but who want something more advanced than spreadsheets and e-mail. The first version of VisibleLogistics is designed to allow small businesses that sell stuff to:
- manage orders in an easy to use application, accessed from a web browser
- give buyers and carriers web access to information about orders and order statuses
- automatically notify business partners by e-mail and SMS when orders are created and when statuses change
- add comments to orders, to communicate with business partners, and vice versa.
Initially, VisibleLogistics will be free while we perfect the software; later we will charge a small monthly subscription.