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Imagine achieving a 100 percent accuracy rate on your orders. It’s not an impossible task, thanks to Conexiom, an order automation software solution.
Ecmarket was founded in 1995 and introduced the Conexiom solution in 2005, with the company going to market under the product’s name. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Conexiom’s core team works with customers around the world to end manual order entry and enhance business efficiencies.
“We give our customers ‘touchless’ orders with 100 percent accuracy,” says Earl van As, vice president of marketing and product management. “Electrical distributors often receive hundreds or thousands of purchase orders on a weekly basis. They arrive via email and without Conexiom, the distributor’s sales staff must manually enter each order into their sales system or ERP. Our email extraction technology automatically processes the order in less than five minutes without the sales staff having to do anything with it.”
Developed as a software as a service (SaaS), Conexiom is a hosted service built around patent-pending email extraction technology. With its focus on email purchases, the system is designed to improve order accuracy and lower the costs of fulfilling orders. The software subscription service leverages existing EDI infrastructure and does not require any tech investments.
88% Faster Turnarounds for Standard Electric
Standard Electric, a division of USESI and an IMARK member, is one of the northeast’s largest electrical suppliers. The company had a whole team of staff members working around the clock to enter orders into its ERP system. Realizing the amount of resources this method required, Standard Electric brought in Conexiom to solve the problem.
By eliminating the need to enter orders line-by-line, Conexiom slashed order processing time from up to 40 minutes, to less than five minutes. This 88 percent reduction in time was a game-changer for Standard Electric and freed up sales staff to do what they do best—build relationships with customers and improve customer service.
“Having a person manually enter an order is the most expensive and least efficient way to process orders,” says van As. By leveraging technology to automate the task, van As continues, “companies reduce their costs by not paying for data entry by their trained salespeople and they increase customer satisfaction; because orders go in with 100 percent accuracy—there are no more data entry mistakes.” At Standard Electric, the previous accuracy index was 97 percent, but with Conexiom, it bumped up to a perfect 100 percent.
“Competition in electrical distribution is fierce and servicing customers quickly and accurately is a great way to stand out,” says van As. “People used to think there was value in having a human enter orders by hand, but not anymore. We give back productivity and optimize time. Some of our customers take that time and decide not to hire more people and others have them do other tasks like upselling.” Some Conexiom users promote the fact that they have an expedited order process while some prefer not to. Either way, according to van As, “customers notice that their orders are fulfilled faster and more accurately after a distributor starts using Conexiom.”
Efficient Onboarding Delivers Rapid Results
Key to Conexiom’s success is its onboarding process, which lays the foundation for its accurate orders down the road. New Conexiom customers are typically fully onboarded in a month or less.
“An organization will hire us to automate certain customer [accounts] and provide us with purchase order samples. We will make a map from those POs for the program to follow so it knows what to do with future orders,” explains van As. “There is a lot of information and complex business logic on a PO. Say an organization orders a quantity of 10 and the measurement is ‘each’—does that mean they want one package of 10 or 10 packages? Our customer will give us instructions in plain-English on what do with the order, and we will write the instructions for the software.”
Conexiom then exports the PO data in a format that’s easiest for the distributor to use, whether that is XML, EDI or another format.
Once a customer is mapped into the Conexiom solution, it doesn’t matter if their POs vary. “What’s unique about the solution is it can handle variations. Say an order comes in with two line items and then the next order is 10 pages long—since each customer has a map created for their PO template, we can handle that,” says van As.
The software maps are key for delivering perfect accuracy and with that accuracy comes touchless orders. “We can give customers touchless orders,” says van As. “We have many customers who never need to review email orders because we automate everything. Plus, it doesn’t matter when the order comes in—an order can come in after business hours and it’s processed immediately. That’s the beauty of touchless orders.”
For more information, visit conexiom.com.