Order Entry System Reduces Shipping Errors
Problem: The order entry system for My Grandma’s of New England routinely transposed data from one order to another, causing shipping errors and other assorted problems.
Solution: The company implemented a new order entry system.
Results: Shipping errors were virtually eliminated.
My Grandma’s of New England had an order entry system (OES) that was wildly unstable, often causing data errors that resulted in shipping methods from one order being applied to another order, disappearing entirely or customer greetings placed on an order to end up on the wrong order. So last November, the company implemented Morse Data’s InOrder OES to reduce shipping errors caused by its legacy OES. Today, data errors are virtually gone, but it was a long road to get there.
The old system, according to Bruce Mills, vice president of operations and marketing at the Boston-based multichannel coffee cake merchant, caused errors that affected about 25 percent of all of My Grandma’s orders.
Adding to Mills’ frustration, his previous OES vendor was unresponsive to repeated technical support requests to resolve the problems. While he had researched how difficult it would be to force the vendor to fulfill the customer and technical support portions of its contract, he ultimately decided that bailing out and finding a new vendor would be less costly and more productive for the business.
Mills’ initial search yielded about a dozen potential software vendors, but he narrowed the field to Ecometry and Morse Data. The latter was chosen, not only because of its level of technology and commitment to customer service, Mills says, but also because “we were going to be a fairly large fish in a small pond as opposed to a little fish in a huge pond.”
Once My Grandma’s chose Morse Data’s InOrder OES, implementation wasn’t difficult, although Mills admits that he and his team did underestimate how long it would take to set up the system.
