Most food and beverage distributors don’t start looking for order management software because of one bad order.
They start looking because the same small problems keep coming back. An order keyed in with the wrong unit of measure. A customer charged last month’s price. A PDF order sitting unread in a shared inbox until the cut-off has passed.
This guide sets out what to look for when choosing order management software for a foodservice or wholesale distribution business, the questions worth asking any supplier, and how to test a system against your own orders before you commit.
The short answer
The right order management software for a food and beverage distributor does seven things well.
- It captures orders from every channel your customers already use, including email, PDF, spreadsheet, EDI and e-commerce.
- It checks every order line against the customer’s agreed price, available stock and delivery schedule before the order reaches your ERP.
- It passes clean orders straight through and flags the exceptions for a person to review.
- It connects to your existing ERP and CRM, so nobody keys the same order in twice.
- It shows you, in plain numbers, how many orders go through without anyone touching them.
- It shows which of today’s expected orders haven’t arrived yet.
- It flags orders that come in below a customer’s expected value.
Everything else is detail.
Those seven points are where the time and the margin are won or lost.
Signs your current process is costing you
On paper, taking an order is simple. A customer sends it, a team enters it, the warehouse picks it.
In practice, a lot happens in between. A few familiar signs that the process is costing more than it should:
- Your customer service team spends the first hours of each day re-typing orders from emails and PDFs.
- Credit notes are regularly raised for pricing errors that should have been caught when the order was entered.
- Orders that arrive after a cut-off, or in an unexpected format, are sometimes missed until the customer chases.
- Different customers send orders in different formats, and each one needs its own workaround.
- Nobody can say with confidence what share of orders go through without someone touching them.
If two or more of these sound familiar, the problem is rarely the team.
It is the process they are working within.
What to look for
When you speak to suppliers, seven areas separate a system that removes work from one that simply moves it somewhere else.
1. Order capture across every channel
Your customers will not all change how they order to suit your system. Some use your web shop. Some send EDI. Many still email a PDF or a spreadsheet.
A good system accepts all of these and turns them into one clean order format, without asking customers to change their habits.
Ask the supplier: which order formats can you read today, and what happens when a customer sends one you haven’t seen before?
2. Validation before the order reaches your ERP
This is where most of the commercial value sits. Every order line should be checked against the customer’s agreed price, the product’s unit of measure, available stock and the delivery schedule before it is accepted.
A price agreed by a rep on Tuesday should be the price on the invoice. When it isn’t, the cost shows up later as a credit note, a dispute or a margin variance no one can quite explain.
Ask the supplier: what exactly does the system check on each order line, and can we add our own rules?
3. Sensible exception handling
No system handles every order automatically, and one that claims to deserves a closer look. The real question is what happens to the orders it can’t process.
The strongest systems pass clean orders straight through and route the exceptions to the right person, with the problem already identified. Your team’s time goes on the orders that need judgement, not on re-typing the ones that don’t.
Ask the supplier: show us an exception. What does the person reviewing it actually see?
4. Integration with your existing ERP and CRM
Order management software should sit alongside the systems you already run, not replace them. If an order still has to be re-keyed into the ERP, much of the benefit is lost.
Ask the supplier: have you connected to our ERP before, how long did it take, and who does the work?
5. Visibility of missed and short orders
Some of the most expensive orders are the ones that never arrive. A regular customer who usually orders on a Monday and doesn’t is worth knowing about on Monday afternoon, not at month end.
The same goes for an order that does arrive but comes in well below that customer’s usual value. A line that has quietly dropped off is often a product they’ve started buying elsewhere.
Look for a system that tracks expected orders and alerts the team when one is missing or short.
Ask the supplier: how would we know if a regular customer’s order didn’t come in, or came in well below its usual value?
6. Reporting you can act on
At any point, you should be able to see how many orders arrived, how many went through untouched, how many needed intervention and why.
Those numbers show where the process is still leaking, and whether the investment is paying back.
Ask the supplier: what does the standard report show, and can we see a live example?
7. A realistic implementation plan
Implementation is where many software projects stall. Look for a clear plan, a named contact and a phased start with a small group of customers, rather than the whole customer base at once.
Ask the supplier: what do you need from our team, and how long before the first live orders go through?
How to test a system with your own orders
Demos are built to go well. The better test is your own data.
- Choose 20 real orders from the last month.
- Include the awkward ones: a scanned order form, a spreadsheet with merged cells, an order carrying a promotional price, and one for a product that has since been discontinued.
- Ask each supplier to run the same 20 orders through their system and show you the output.
- Compare how many were processed correctly, how many were flagged, and whether the flags were the right ones.
If a system handles your clean orders but struggles with your difficult ones, you’ll find out now rather than six months after go-live.
Common mistakes when choosing
- Buying on features rather than fit. A long feature list matters less than how the system handles your ten most common order types.
- Asking customers to change how they order. If the system only works when customers use a portal, adoption will be slow and partial.
- Leaving pricing out of scope. Order capture without price validation moves errors through faster. It doesn’t remove them.
- Measuring the wrong thing. Speed of entry matters, but the commercial return usually comes from fewer credit notes, fewer disputes and fewer missed orders.
Common questions
What is order management software for food and beverage distribution?
It is software that captures customer orders from every channel, checks them against agreed prices, stock and delivery schedules, and passes clean orders into the ERP. It is designed to reduce manual order entry and the errors that come with it.
Do we need to replace our ERP?
No. Order management software is designed to work alongside an existing ERP and CRM. How it connects is one of the most important things to check during selection.
Will our customers need to change how they order?
They shouldn’t have to. A good system accepts orders in the formats customers already use, including email, PDF, spreadsheet, EDI and e-commerce.
How long does implementation take?
It depends on the supplier, the number of order formats and the integrations involved. Ask for a phased plan that starts with a small group of customers.
What return should we expect?
The most visible gain is time saved on manual entry. The larger commercial return usually comes from fewer pricing errors, fewer credit notes and fewer missed orders.
Where Allsop fits
At Allsop, we work with food and beverage businesses to bring more accuracy, visibility and control to the order process, intelligent software for Customer Order Automation, Data Workbench and Customer Margin Management
Our Customer Order Automation software reads orders arriving by email, file transfer and API. It checks price, availability and delivery scheduling on every line, flags exceptions for your team to review, and connects to your existing ERP and CRM. It also alerts your team when an expected order hasn’t arrived.
If your team is still re-typing orders, or credit notes keep tracing back to order entry, it might be worth a closer look.
Read more about Customer Order Automation, or send us 20 of your own orders and we’ll show you what happens to them.
Read our guide on how to automate manual order entry
