Transform outbound logistics - End-to-end order management takes the blinders off by data-mining inventory and transaction history during order building, increasing gross profits an improving delivery times and fill-rates.
Custom BI driven Sales Fulfillment - Tune pick priorities (the tip of the fulfillment spear) to go well beyond simple ship-dates, including the ability to use customized business formulas to ensure your best customers are always prioritized.
AI Driven Analysis - Use data to train AI language models (LLMs) to uncover deep insight about your organization’s sales and fulfillment performance.
Configure your order entry processes to match the unique requirements of B2B, B2C, or mixed B2B & B2C models, which have a different set of requirements and trade-offs.
Support for multiple items types and units of measure (UOMs)
Full inventory view while building the order - Includes vital sales metrics such as back-order, and on-order purchases with expected quantities and delivery dates. As an aside - If you have API access to vendor warehouses, we can use that to get inventory availability during the order building process, for both Directship and Dropship orders.
Ship Rate Comparison - Compare multiple parcel and freight carriers’ rates during order quotations, which can be updated during order fulfillment.
Point of Sale (POS) Orders & Payments - Orders can be paid from order entry using credit card processing or can be invoiced on credit terms. All pre-pay orders are invoiced before the order is shipped vs post-ship invoicing.
Sometimes however, a more specialized POS solution might be needed, and to this end BizAutomation is able to API connect to solutions such as Clover, Square, and others.
Orchestrate Picking, Packing, and Shipping within the order itself or use BizAutomation’s WMS fulfillment manager to unlock the ability to ship hundreds or even thousands of orders per day.
Partial Fulfillment & Ship Complete Fulfillment - Allow orders to ship partially due to multiple shipping date requirements, or because some line items are on back-order or set an order to “Ship Complete” and BizAutomation will prevent accidental partial fulfillment, ensuring that all items ship on the same ship date, but only when all line items in the order are available.
Fulfillment Analysis - Has this ever happened to you? A small order from a small customer is shipped, consuming the last available qty of an item that’s tied to a huge shipment for your biggest customer, preventing that order from being shipped (or at least being shipped completely). This and many other scenarios can now be analyzed and prioritized with BizAutomation’s wizard driven pick priority analysis.
Post Fulfillment Invoicing - For customers with credit terms, you can set invoices to auto-generate based on packing slips with each shipment.
Soft & Hard Back Orders (BO) - Hard BOs are fulfillment conditions where no quantity is available to be picked against an order - even partially, where as soft BOs enable an item to be picked against an order, but at the expense of availability prioritized to another order (the proverbial “rob Peter to pay Paul” inventory trade-off) based on the selected pick-priority formula.
Comprehensive Dropship and Directship capabilities
Dropship workflow provides all the automation needed for complex business processes such as feeding vendors blind or branded packing slips from connected sales orders.
Directship from one Purchase Order connected to many Sales Orders, enabling multi-ship to one or more warehouses, which depending on shipping logistics can be received and put away or transferred out to another warehouse.
Split Dropship or Directship from to your customer warehouse to their customer’s ship-to location using blind or branded BOLs and Packing Slips.
Once orders are linked, shared line items, and extended business documents such as quotes, order acknowledgements, and POs, are also linked, so that editing a line item creates a cascade of changes that reverberate throughout the network of linked records. For example, if qty is increased on the sales order, this prompts the PO to increase its purchase qty, both on the record and the document you send your vendor, along with the sales order side documents you send the customer, such as Quotes and Order Acknowledgements.
Linking Purchase Orders to Sales Orders - By enabling you to link (aka match / map) sales orders to open purchase orders with one or more equivelant matching line item, you'll foster a more efficient and streamlined order fulfillment process, optimize inventory levels, and enhance overall business operations.
Cross Record Billing & Invoicing - Use billing and shipping costs incurred from the purchase order to generate invoices and shipping costs impacting order gross profit on the sales order and visa versa.
Generate Invoices on linked Sales Orders from Vendor Invoices on linked Purchase Orders - After vendors ship and invoice, generate invoices on linked Sales Orders, including all the including the ship-via, ship-service, shipping cost, tracking #s, and relevant costs used to drive customer shipping prices according to customer shipping terms (Invoiceable and Non-Invoiceable shipping costs, margins, etc..).
Sales Opportunity to Order Transitions - One of the 3 mainstays of CRM “Opportunity Management” is leveraged as a pre-order pipeline tool, culminating in a “Deal Won” (is converted into an order) or “Deal Lost” opportunity.
Custom Quotes - Taylor make your organization’s own customized quote templates using your own design language, colors, wording, logos, images, and even currency default. Define multiple templates, then map a template to a business unit, or customer tier.
If your customers or vendors are large organizations with dozens or even hundreds of ship-to locations, branches, subsidiaries, etc.. you need efficient address management.
Split-Shipping - Including multiple ship from / ship-to locations, with multiple ship-dates. BizAutomation will automatically handle all logistics required behind the scenes for all downstream processes, including separating shipment booking, packaging, etc...
Customer blanket orders can also use split-order capabilities in order to segment quantity and split ship-dates as needed.
Ship Complete - If a customer requires a ship-complete, BizAutomation will enforce ship-date, and all the fulfillment logistics needed to ensure the order is allocated, and shipped completely with no partials.
Native Order Documents aka “BizDocs” inherit data from orders based on default, and custom merge fields. Common BizDocs include Order Acknowledgements, Sales Orders, Quotes, etc.. BizDocs can also be automatically paired with external PDFs such as “Terms & Conditions” and other documents that relate to the BizDoc.
Document Customization - BizAutomation provides many common documents by default, but organizations can also add their own custom BizDocs types, which can be customized using the BizDocs platform, which leverages skill-sets any website designer will have for adding style, default and custom merge fields from the order, customer, item, and other modules.
Document Messaging / Email - Documents can be converted into PDFs and emailed out directly from the order, with the event captured on the order’s correspondence history.
Customer and Vendor RMAs are supported, and can be issued separately, or combined into split order RMAs.
Split Order RMAs - Split orders include items links to POs which may be comingled with items that aren’t. Workflow rules enable the ability to RMA items both to your warehouse or a 3rd party vendor depending on each line item’s specific needs. Split order RMAs streamline costs by avoiding costly shipment layovers at your own warehouse, bypassing delays and labor costs.
Warranty - Add contracts to various product groups to generate coverage periods.
Eligibility Management - When product is shipped back to your warehouse, during the receiving process, your staff will be able to inspect product to issue eligibility conditions, which combined with warranty coverage terms, drive credit memos and refund eligibility.
Restocking Fees - Provide restocking fees for eligible returns.
Credit Memos & Refunds - Issue credit memos or refunds for eligible returns.
Price Rules - The price rule wizard provides a matrix of variations, such as quantity range, product or product groups, and relationships (e.g. My Gold customers get a better price than Silver tier customers). Conflict management resolves the potential for two pricing rules that seemingly contradict from getting in the way of a sale.
Price Levels & Tiers - Set quantity or amount ranges that are set within the item records themselves. These tables can be easily updated using the update wizard.
Cost + Margin driven Price Formulas - If your organization uses this method of pricing, it can be set to dynamically update based on dynamic cost updates, or calculate from period based static cost. This method fluctuates profit margins during the price period rather than cost which is needed when contractually committing to price lists for a period of time.
Promotions Management - Impact the opportunity / quote with promotion rules that can layer on top of the pricing foundation already laid. Use date ranges for temporary discounts. Set rules such as “IF X happens, THEN discount Y”, etc.. Multi-currency can also drive pricing depending on base and alternate currencies (contact us for details).
Cost Transparency - Every line item within every order has permission enabled cost source, which you can use to show transparency within the order’s gross profits and sales commission calculations. Cost sources can include vendor costs from tables dynamically generated from individual purchase orders, or from directly linked dropship or Directship purchase orders.
Sales Order Approvals - Set price margin thresholds that trigger approval requests, to ensure that margin minimums are maintained.
Customer Blanket Orders - Enables your organization to create orders that track purchase contracts with your customers, including “Shipment Dates”, Quantities, “Ship From” and “Ship To” locations.
Vendor Blanket Orders - Enables your organization to create orders that track purchase contracts with your vendors, including “Shipment Dates”, Quantities, “Ship From” and “Ship To” locations. Works with demand planning to prevent double purchase recommendations.
Transfer Orders - While building an order, if your organization uses multiple warehouses (including 3PLs) you can transfer inventory across warehouses based on availability to prevent backorders, and keep warehouse inventory in balanced equilibrium. Transfer orders will leverage BizAutomation’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) to manage inbound and outbound movement of inventory.
Building an order without comprehensive item substitution is like driving with blinders because it’s impossible to know what you can do with the inventory you have based on each customer’s purchase policies. BizAutomation takes the blinders off, because it guides you through what you can and can’t substitute based on the needs of the order cross referenced with the individual needs of the customer, giving you pin-point insight so you can optimize the order:
Cross-Selling & Up-Selling - Add item options such as accessories, recommended or required add-ons, or upsell premium items related to the one being added.
Custom define incentive programs around the way you do business.
Sales Employees & Partner Commissions - Split Sales Opportunities and Sales Orders into both internal and partner resources (a partner can be a reseller, dealer, etc..) so that each can receive a percentage of the commission.
Commission Base - Commission can be based on things like amounts paid to invoices, total order sub-total, or gross profits (gross profit definitions are custom defined too).
Multi-Dimensional Tiers - Meaning that you can set a range of items, quantities, amounts, etc.. and each can interact with the other in a multi-dimensional way, which really opens up what you can do. This way, sales person A can make more commission for selling the same tier of products as a more junior sales person with a different incentive package. This is but a single example, but in all cases the process is wizard driven.
Share commission reports with drill down - Everyone with a commission incentive has the ability to see their own incentive status, to find out how much they’ve made for a pay period, or how close they are to reaching a new milestone. Each commission amount can be drilled into, so that the source order, and invoice involved can be audited to confirm that everything is on the up and up.
A WYSIWYG automation wizard that makes it easy to set rules that automate almost every workflow step in the order process. For example, set a WHEN conditions such as “when order is created”, together with the resulting action, such as the emailing of an Order Acknowledgement PDF to the customer using custom email templates.
Most orders go through constant modifications until they’re closed. Order auditing lets you track every modification made, who made it, and when. It’s available at the click of a button from anywhere in every order.
Customize order lists and records to your specific business needs. Field data is included in custom reports and analytics.
Custom Fields, Columns, Tabs, & Forms - Add custom labels, fields (multiple field types are available), and field location throughout order details, then extend those fields to custom configure order list columns based on user roles. Add custom tabs to orders details then populate them with custom fields.
Custom Order Documents - Build your own version of an invoice, a quotation, or whatever document your organization needs. Populate your business documents with custom formatting, fields from orders, customers, and contacts. Add your own custom column grids reflecting default and custom item fields, footers, terms and conditions. Associate other boiler plate documents such as Word and PDFs. Some documents can be set to dynamically update based on order changes, including versioning control.
Sales Orders contain a detailed accounting of profit and cost centers related, not just to the specific sales order, but also the constellation of Dropship or Directship Purchase Orders if any, including items, shipping, commissions, and any other element that might impact the gross profit of every order in the system.
Initiate fulfillment from both the order to suit low volume needs, or the mass fulfillment module, which can handle thousands of shipments per day. Unlike 3rd party shipping add-ons, it’s part of the suite so it leverages everything - including financials for invoicing, meaning no duplicates of inventory, orders, or customer related data.
To learn more, see “Warehouse Fulfillment” section of the website.
Transportation Management & Logistics with over 100 parcel & freight carriers.
Carrier / Ship Rate Comparison & Booking - Compare shipping rates across multiple parcel and *freight carriers via automatically formed shipping groups based on fulfillment packing. BizAutomation will automatically pick the right group of carriers based on a variety of conditions (e.g. Under 150 Lbs. compares parcel carriers such FedEx, UPS, and USPS, and Over 150 Lbs. quotes any number of your preferred LTL or FL carriers).
Labels & Tracking #s - Print shipping labels during and after the fulfillment process on a variety of printers including thermal paper printers such as Zebra, or image based printers.
Order Tracking & Shipment Status - After an order is fulfilled and shipped, it’s tracked via API communication with each carrier’s TMS. This lets customer service agents see where orders stand after leaving your warehouse (e.g. “In-Transit”, “Out for delivery”, etc..).
Shipment Packaging - BizAutomation enables you to add everything all shipment types require. For Parcel shipping, all the packaging types are provided by carrier (e.g. FedEx 10kg Box, etc..) and for freight you can add your own container types including pallets, boxes, containers, etc.. Freight accessorial options are also available during the booking of shipments.
Shipping Terms Management - Most business relationships require shipping terms, where some require use of their carrier for LTL and Parcel shipments, others may negotiate free shipping with large blanket contracts, etc.. BizAutomation handles these terms and the complex behind the scene logistics that affect accounting, order gross profit, and sales commissions.
Custom Shipping Rules - Create your own custom shipping rates from rules based on order amount, weight, and from / to locations.
Shipping Promotions - Include shipping promotions while building or modifying an order, including minimum spend, and spend incentivizes e.g. “Spend $100 and shipping is free”.