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Introduction
The apparel industry is constantly experiencing rapid changes driven by the rise of e-commerce and globalization.
Against this backdrop, this apparel distributor founded in 2007 emerged with a mission to provide premium quality and affordable basic t-shirts to consumers. This case study explores the operational hurdles of the distributor, as well as examining its digitalization journey for growth and success in a highly competitive market.
Key Challenges
1. Customer
Inferior customer experience
Before the widespread adoption of sales automation tools, the distributor had to rely heavily on their sales reps to provide customers with the information they needed to make informed purchase decisions. This often resulted in an inferior customer experience, as customers were forced to wait for sales reps to respond to their inquiries about inventory levels, pricing, and promotional updates.
Additionally, customers often had to manually ask for updates on the status of their orders, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction with the purchasing process. These limitations of the pre-automation era for the distributor often resulted in a slower, more cumbersome sales process and a less efficient use of time and resources for both customers and sales reps alike.
2. Sales & Admin Team
Low work productivity
Before the introduction of sales automation, the distributor’s sales and admin team often had to perform many of their duties manually, resulting in a low level of work productivity. For example, updating information on new products, pricing, and inventory was a time-consuming and often error-prone process, as admin had to enter data manually and ensure that it was accurate and up to date.
Similarly, order processing was often a manual and labor-intensive process, requiring admin to enter orders by hand and track them throughout the sales cycle.
Additionally, payment reconciliation was often tedious, as admins had to manually match payments to invoices and reconcile any discrepancies. These tasks consumed valuable time and resources, detracting from the ability of the workforce to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.
Escalating operation costs
Before adopting automation, the distributor faced escalating operational costs as they grew and expanded their sales and administrative functions.
One of the key drivers of this cost escalation was the risk of human errors. With increasing sales volume and larger teams, manual data entry and order processing became more prone to errors, which could result in incorrect orders, potential delayed shipments, and dissatisfied customers. Correcting these errors consumed valuable time and resources, adding to the overall cost of operations.
Additionally, as the business grew, it became more difficult to manage sales and administrative functions, resulting in increased headcount costs.
3. Management
Intuitive decision-making
The management relied solely on intuition in the absence of reliable data, resulting inbusiness owners and stakeholders making decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information, which then limited the distributor’s business scalability.
Requirements:
Improve customer experience via a self-service platform.
Seamless integration to the distributor’s AS (SQL) to improve operational efficiency.
Beneficial Impact
1. Customer
Improved customer satisfaction
Boostorder solutions have revolutionized how the distributor interacts with their customers, providing new avenues to improve customer satisfaction.
One of the most significant benefits is the instant access to updated information. With Boostorder Direct, customers can easily access key documents, catalogs, pricing, and promotional updates in real-time, without having to wait for a sales representative to provide them.
Additionally, automated notifications provide customers with clear visibility into their order statuses, which can help them better plan and manage their own business operations.
This transparency also extends to ageing and payment statuses, which can be viewed easily through automated systems.
By providing customers with real-time access to important information, the distributor has increased customer satisfaction and built stronger relationships with their existing customers.
2. Sales & Admin Team
Improved work productivity
One of the biggest impacts shown after implementing Boostorder’s sales automation tools is the ability to automatically update key information, such as product details, pricing, and ageing, to the sales team. This allows the sales and admin team to stay informed and up to date with the latest information without the need for manual updates or communication.
With Boostorder Rep, order processing time has been reduced significantly by as low as 15 minutes. This has allowed the sales team to focus on selling and growing the business, rather than spending time on administrative tasks.
Lastly, automatic and speedy payment reconciliation is another highlight. With this integration system embedded within Boostorder Sync, the distributor can now track and reconcile payments easily, helping to reduce errors and improve financial reporting. By automating these processes, businesses can improve work productivity for their sales and administrative teams, freeing up valuable time and resources to focus on other important tasks.
Reduce operational expenses
After implementing Boostorder’s solutions, the distributor now possesses the ability to reduce administrative costs by automating tasks that previously required manual intervention. By automating tasks such as order processing, document management, and inventory management, the distributor has witnessed a significant reduction in their reliance on administrative personnel, leading to a reduction in operational expenses of up to 40%.
Despite the reduction in operational expenses, the distributor is still able to process manual orders due to the efficiency and accuracy of the automated systems, which has successfully led to improved profitability.
3. Management
Data-driven decision making
Boostorder’s solutions have made it easier for businesses to collect and analyze data, providing valuable insights that can inform data-driven decision making. By leveraging the data generated by Boostorder’s sales automation tools, the distributor’s management can speed up their decision-making processes and make more informed choices, all thanks to real-time information rather than intuition or guesswork.
Boostorder is a SAAS company that provides an end-to-end digital transformation solution for B2B brands and distributors with our wide range of products and solutions.
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