When answering that question, let’s go back to the basics and find out what order fulfilment is in the first place. For example, we have a web store owner called Peter. On his website, there is a customer called Mary, who is looking for her dream shoes. When Mary finds the shoes she’s been looking for, she orders them. That’s when order fulfilment starts. Order fulfilment is basically the three steps between the ‘Confirm order’ click from Mary in Peter’s online store and Mary receiving her beloved shoes.
After Mary’s order is received by the store owner, Peter, it’s processed by him – meaning finding the shoes from the warehouse, packing them, dealing with the documents – and eventually delivered to Mary.
How smoothly and rapidly Peter can process his orders becomes greatly visible on the face of his customer Mary. That’s where automation comes into play. Automation in the order fulfilment makes the process more efficient and productive, reducing errors and improving customer service.
The automation, depending on the necessity, may vary. What I want to talk about is the documentation of the order fulfilment. It could take a ton of time when not automated which could stand in the way of progress and expansion.
Automation of documents enables the user to repeatedly send out the same templates – only showing different data that is specific to the order. Or in other words, it helps you to assemble a new document based on pre-existing text and/or data.
Why is Document Automation Useful?
Automated documents are great when it comes to consistency because automation helps provide something that humans often can’t – a steady supply of documentation immediately with a near 0% error rate. This is because an automated system is usually managed centrally which makes it easier to run and control. Automation does require some setting up before use, but in this tech-filled world of today, so does every other smart service or tool that helps make our daily lives easier.
When the system setup is done, the option to generate personal and informative documents in the blink of an eye becomes available. The created templates are pre-filled, easily adjustable and can help streamline the order fulfilment process of any business to help compete with the biggest of the bunch. But what’s more, the automation of the order fulfilment can really help a business owner focus on the personalisation of the business.
This is what he says about his document supplier Printout Designer: “it’s important to see how much your system has saved me and my production team in time.” He also gave an estimate that his company will save 5-7 days on his orders thanks to this.
Let’s take another example, this time from real life – Jason from Peaks Apparel. Jason is a tech-savvy badass who knows exactly how he wants to run his business of providing the most hardcore people on the planet with his gear.
Jason had a problem with custom options. This lead to him joining the BigCommerce platform where he knew exactly what he was looking for. Therefore he contacted the BigCommerce team who immediately pointed him to Printout Designer – a document automation tool that enables you to streamline your shipping process with the ability to create invoices, picking and packing slips, and labels in a matter of seconds.
Jason has admitted that “branding is his thing” in managing the company and he willingly leaves the document generation to someone else. According to Jason, an automated document generation is a real time-saver. This is what he says about his document supplier Printout Designer: “it’s important to see how much your system has saved me and my production team in time.” He also gave an estimate that his company will save 5-7 days on his orders thanks to this. With a specialised app that does most of the document generation work for him, Jason can really focus on giving a proper face, an image of his company.
Conclusion
As said earlier – the width of Mary’s smile is directly related to the speed that Peter does his business. When taking Jason’s estimate of saving 5-7 days on order fulfillment thanks to document automation we can see that Peter can either:
- Make his customer Mary real happy about receiving her goods a week earlier.
- Have a small room for error for when something else in the order fulfillment doesn’t go directly as planned. This means that Mary doesn’t have to wait longer than the originally estimated shipping period.
And that’s just what the document automation is – a gateway to help streamline the order fulfillment – meaning better customer service, more consistency, fewer errors and most importantly a face for the customer to really remember.
So, a few things:
- Automation in the order fulfilment makes the process more efficient and drastically reduces the fulfillment time
- It helps to reduce errors, leading to a more trustworthy system.
- Document automation helps you to assemble a new document based on pre-existing text and/or data.
- Central management helps to run and control your documentation more easily.
- With the supply line taken care of, one can really focus on giving the company a face to remember.
Robert is Customer Success Manager and helps Printout Designer users to reach their business goals.
