COVID’s Biggest Takeaway for Business: Modernize Now

It’s been one year since COVID-19 started dominating headlines across the globe. Once the pandemic fully hit in March 2020, business as we knew it changed almost instantaneously, as stay-at-home orders went into effect and supply chains were upended. For many business leaders, the idea of digital transformation shifted from a near future hope to an immediate business imperative.

Modernize Now

While the pandemic has served up countless challenges and learning lessons, the biggest takeaway for business has undoubtedly been the importance of modernizing critical processes now. With so much unknown as COVID-19 continues to linger and evolve, the takeaway to modernize business processes should also be a call to act before the unexpected hits again in some new way.

The digital transformation wishlists that companies have are often long and daunting. However, the past year illustrated that solutions that streamline and simplify commercial and customer processes should be at the top of those lists. One of the best tools for modernizing business practices within the manufacturing and distribution space is sales order automation, which delivers immediate business value and high ROI.

Genpak

A perfect example of modernizing critical processes is Genpak, a food-service packaging manufacturer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before the pandemic, the company had the foresight to automate its manual, tedious, and time-consuming order process. The benefits of sales order automation were apparent right away—most notably with Genpak’s customer service representatives (CSRs).

Within manufacturing and distribution, time is a particularly precious commodity for CSRs. That’s because nearly half of B2B sales orders still have to be manually entered, which ties up CSRs three-to-four hours each workday as they key in complex purchase orders. With purpose-built sales order automation, though, a typical touchless order can be processed in under two minutes—without CSR support. Through touchless order processing, Genpak’s CSRs went from the daily whirlwind of trying to manually process customer orders to reclaiming 75 hours per week that they redeployed to actually helping customers succeed instead.

Genpak’s timing to modernize proved fortuitous when the pandemic served as a catalyst to skyrocket demand for its products nearly overnight. Ordering takeout became a highlight in the early days of the pandemic as people grew tired of cooking, wanted to get out of their houses, and searched for ways to support local businesses. Companies like Genpak were understandably slammed with orders for food-service containers and dinnerware. By implementing sales order automation before the unexpected hit, Genpak had unknowingly prepared and positioned itself for the pandemic’s demand spikes.

Automation’s Benefits

How could your company benefit from modernizing now? Besides managing demand spikes and optimizing the customer experience like Genpak did, sales order automation offers a number of other benefits:

• Sell more: When CSRs have more time to devote to value-add activities, they can focus on nurturing relationships and helping customers serve their customers better, which, in turn, improves sales. Sales order automation eliminates inefficiencies and helps internal resources implement innovative strategies that keep business growing and moving forward.
• Reduce error: Within manufacturing and distribution, purchase orders are typically long and complex. To date, it’s been way too easy for CSRs to inadvertently type an incorrect digit or character when they’re manually keying in those orders. Human error like this is costly and time-consuming. Purpose-built sales order automation can extract the details from a purchase order and transform them—automatically and accurately—into a sales order that is integrated within the existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It also allows for document automation in a way that does not impact the buying behavior of customers, who will only notice faster and more accurate processing of their orders.
• Improve the bottom line: With sales order automation, companies can immediately do more with less. With more accurate order fulfillment and a greater focus on the customer experience, the cost of processing orders decreases as customer retention increases, without forcing customers to change their behavior. Also worth noting: Purpose-built sales order automation doesn’t require hardware, software licenses, or setup and support fees.
• Build a resilient business: The pandemic has underscored that unexpected challenges can arise rapidly and companies need to be able to respond in a way that mitigates risks and ensures business continuity. Business resiliency requires lean operations, without inefficiencies that future disruptions will expose. While this may sound daunting, companies can start by automating processes that are low-risk but fast time-to-value and are directly tied to revenue.

As the U.S. hits the one-year mark in the COVID-19 pandemic, companies should heed this warning: The time to modernize is now. And modernizing your business processes is simpler than you might think. Automation puts companies and customers in a position to win. Specifically, sales order automation frees up company resources, budget, and time to focus on what drives real value. The past year has shown that businesses that modernize critical processes are prepared for the unexpected—they are better, faster, and more efficient.

Ray Grady is the president and CEO of Conexiom.