Case Studies
Commercial Equipment
A global foodservice equipment manufacturer faced significant challenges in order fulfillment due to data silos and manual processes, leading to inaccurate ship date estimates. Discover how the Quant Fusion Delivery Insight SaaS solution transformed their operations, improving accuracy, revenue visibility, and customer satisfaction while ensuring compliance and scalability.
Order Management Challenge
Problem
The customer service team struggled to accurately estimate future ship dates for several reasons:
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Data Silos: Information was scattered across various internal systems and external partners. For instance, procurement had to identify specific SKUs, locate the relevant purchase orders, and manually extract freight information from multiple sources. Inconsistent data query dates for the various reports often required the entire process to be repeated.
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Manual Calculation: Calculating an order's ship date involved a complex manual process that required estimating inventory availability dates for each item on an order, often leading to inaccuracies.
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Time-Consuming Processes: The team had to collect data from multiple internal and external sources, including sales orders, inventory, purchase orders, production plans, and inbound freight statuses.
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Limited Revenue Visibility: Finance lacked visibility into the expected monthly revenue. Instead, estimates were based on rough "rule of thumb" guesses, resulting in unreliable forecasts.
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Compliance Risks: Using spreadsheets for inventory and revenue calculations raised Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance concerns.
Solution
The Delivery Insight SaaS solution mitigates operational risk by providing real-time visibility into order fulfillment, enabling proactive decision-making. By dynamically recalculating ship dates, the system allows early identification of potential delays or shortages, empowering managers to take preemptive actions and minimize disruptions.
The software calculated a ship date for every sales order within the ERP system. This solution integrated data from various sources using Python scripts, APIs, and CSV files, all hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which ensures robust security and compliance with regulatory guidelines. The tool prioritized orders based on set criteria (e.g., promise date, revenue, profit, customer status) and assigned current and future inventory to orders according to availability dates. As data changed—such as production schedules, logistics information, or new order priorities—the tool recalculated the ship dates in real-time.
Results
This automated solution transformed a time-consuming, error-prone process into a streamlined, reliable Decision Determination engine, improving operational efficiency and financial visibility by integrating multiple data sources to calculate ship dates for each order using proprietary software.
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Increased Efficiency: Saved up to 400 hours annually for each CSR, Sales, and Procurement employee.
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Improved Accuracy: Ship dates were recalculated in real-time as new data became available, enhancing accuracy and reducing manual errors.
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Enhanced Revenue Visibility: Provided finance with reliable monthly revenue projections by calculating actual ship dates.
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Compliance: Eliminated spreadsheet use, achieving SOX compliance.
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Improved Customer Satisfaction: Increased on-time shipping and order fill rates, resulting in higher dealer confidence and fewer penalties or chargebacks.