The order comes in and the multiplying starts
The customer sends the Excel file, or a PDF that is a printout from their own business software, and inside there are eight models, each with six sizes and four colors, so what is one screenful becomes a hundred or so lines to key into your business software, one by one, with the right quantity in the right box
The volume here is not in the orders, it is in the lines, the size and color matrix multiplies everything, and around line eighty the eye slips a column across, the black 42 takes the quantities of the 44, the delivery note goes out, and you find out when the customer calls. It is exactly the kind of work where a person loses their place and a machine does not, because at line eighty the machine is as careful as it was at the first
The work that takes the hours in the office
- Orders that each arrive in their own format, some with the sizes in columns, some in rows, some sending the PDF from their system and leaving you to trace it out by hand
- The customer's codes, which are not yours, so there is always a table, often in the head of whoever has worked there for twenty years
- The subcontractors, work that goes out with its own delivery note and comes back with another, and the count of how much you sent and how much came back, which has to be kept line by line
- The sample ranges, requests that arrive outside the normal run of orders and have to be recorded all the same
- The item records, which swell every season with new codes, variants and colors that change name
- The seasonality, because twice a year everything arrives at once, and the people in the office are always the same ones
Examples of what the system can do
These are examples of jobs the system is able to carry out, not jobs already delivered to some company, Muffin Suite started recently and we would rather tell you that than spin you a story
- It reads the customer's order, whether it is an Excel file or a PDF, works out model, color, size and quantity, and writes the lines into the business software with your codes, following the conversion table you give it
- It compares the order received with the confirmation you are about to send, and flags where the totals of a combination do not match, before the cutting room supervisor sees a wrong number
- It prepares the work notes for the subcontractor starting from the order, and keeps the picture of what has gone out and not yet come back
- It opens the item records and enters the new codes for the season with their variants, one line after another, without anyone spending days keying in codes
- It logs into the customer's portal with the credentials you already use, downloads the new orders and brings them in without anyone sitting there checking whether something has arrived
The system works on industry business software and on customer portals by opening the screens the way you would, so it is fine on programs that have no direct integration too, without asking anything of whoever sold them to you
What stays with the people in the office
The system does the mechanical steps, the decisions stay yours, it does not invent a color that matches nothing or a size that does not exist in the records, it stops on that line, sets it aside and carries on with the rest of the order
How much freedom to give it is up to you, at the start it is worth keeping it on a short rein, with more stops and more confirmations, then you widen it on the cases you have already seen run well
Why you come out ahead
The hours that go into retyping lines today come back, and you use them to follow your customers, to argue less with the subcontractors, or simply to be out of the office before eight when the season arrives, without hiring anyone just to key in data two months a year
You don't have to replace your software and you don't pay a large sum up front, we agree the monthly fee before the rollout, and if you want an idea of how many hours are at stake there is the page to work out the savings
How we begin
I'm Antonio Fuccillo, I write the automations myself and I answer the messages myself, so you're talking straight to the person who does the work
You show me a procedure, a short screen recording while you enter an order is fine, I look at whether it can be done and I tell you the monthly fee before we start, then you approve every addition yourself. If you want to see the steps there is the page on how it works, or write from the contact page