Twenty past nine in the morning, the orders mailbox
You open the orders mailbox and there are eighteen messages that came in after six in the evening, one has a PDF attached with the big logo at the top, one has an Excel sheet where the rows start on the twelfth line, one has written the order into the body of the email, three codes with the quantities beside them, and one has attached a photo of a form filled in by hand
The person who deals with them opens the first one, keeps the email on one side of the screen and the business software on the other, looks up the customer, types the first code, checks that it exists, types the quantity, and meanwhile the phone rings
By eleven nine of them are in, the rest are still sitting there, and the warehouse is waiting to know what to get ready
The work isn't typing, it's understanding
Someone looking from outside sees a person hammering the keyboard, and thinks the problem is typing speed, but that isn't it
The time goes into working out who the email comes from, which format they wrote in this time, which of their codes matches which of yours, whether that quantity makes sense or they got a zero wrong, whether that price is the one on the price list you set up for them
The typing is the last part, the shortest one, and also the only one everybody looks at
Every customer has a format of their own, and that's good news
It looks like chaos, but it isn't, because the mess is between one customer and another, not inside the same customer
The customer who sends the PDF with the big logo has been sending the same one for three years, the codes are always in the first column, the quantities always in the third, and next time it will be that way again
An automation doesn't need everyone to write the same way, it's enough that each one always writes in their own same way
How the knot comes undone, in order
The first step is recognizing the sender, the email address almost always says who it is, and from there the system knows which reading template to use
The second is reading the document according to that template, and here it makes quite a difference whether the attachment is a file born on a computer or a photograph, because in the first case the data is taken as it is and in the second it has to be interpreted, you'll find the detail in the guide on a PDF born on a computer or scanned
The third step is translating the codes, the customer orders with theirs, you sell with yours, and in between you need a conversion table that gets built once and then stays
The fourth is checking the data
Only at the end does the order go into the business software, opening the screens the way the person would, so it works on the business software you already use, without replacing it and without direct integrations
The checks are the real reason to do it
An order entered wrong doesn't stay an office problem, it becomes a parcel that leaves with the wrong goods, a customer on the phone, a return, a credit note, and putting that chain back in order takes far more time than it would have taken to notice earlier
An automation built properly, before it writes anything, looks at whether the code exists in your records, whether the quantity makes sense for that customer, whether the price matches the price list you assigned them, and whether that email isn't a resend of an order already entered yesterday
When something doesn't add up the system doesn't try to guess, it stops, puts that order in a list with the thing that doesn't add up written next to it, and leaves it to a person
Say three orders out of twenty end up in that list, the person looks at those three instead of twenty, and gives them the thought they needed
The handwritten one stays manual, and rightly so
The photo of the form filled in by hand stays manual, it reads badly, it has to be interpreted, and on an order for goods interpretation is not something you want
The same goes for the customer who writes send me the usual, or the one who orders something that isn't on the price list and needs a word with sales, those emails have to reach a person, and an honest automation recognizes them as cases not to touch
The aim isn't for the system to do all the orders, it's for it to do the ones that are always the same, so the mornings stay free for the customers who have something to say
How to tell whether your case fits
It takes very little, how many orders come in over a month, how many customers send them and in how many different formats, and which program you use to enter them
From there you can see straight away which senders are worth starting from and which to leave by hand, and if you want an idea of the time it takes, the Work out the savings page does the sum with your numbers